Filed under: Deals, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO)
Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is hardly prone to benefit from a Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) buyout of Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO). Having a more massive competitor with a more massive piece of the search market hardly does it any good. The “merger” of the two companies also creates that largest display ad company in the world.
But, display advertising is not a fast-growing business. Google’s search operation is, and it will continue to have , more than 60% of the market in the US.
Perhaps because its share price is down so much, Google has begun kicking about the proposed marriage. According to Reuters, Google CEO Eric Schmidt stated, “We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the World wide web, but I doubt it would be.” The search company is probably trying to hint that Microsoft would “use” the new company to promote its software agenda to the detriment of consumers who simply want to use the internet for information and entertainment.
It may be a reasonable argument to get regulators to look hard at the potential deal, but Microsoft isn’t that stupid. It is very prone to understand that pushing its products to users and hurting access to the normal experience of getting everything from sports scores to news about Madonna won’t fly.
Google can hardly talk. It pushes its Google Apps software, its e-mail and mapping products to people who come to the site to use its search features. None of the huge internet sites is “pure”. They do have to make money.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.
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