Google has fired the first shot in what will certainly become a major debate as the proposed purchase of Yahoo.com by Microsoft goes foward.
“”””Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.”
Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.
Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft — despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses — to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions — and consumers deserve satisfying answers.
This hostile bid was announced on Friday, so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first — and should come first — as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.”””””
MSN controls a ton of internet traffic by virtue of it’s Internet Explorer. This puts it in a much different position than the Yahoo.com is currently in.
Yahoo.com depends much more on the domain channel for traffic for its PPC system than MSN will.
As domain owners we may stand as much to gain to lose as any group in this deal.
We will have much more on this in the coming weeks.
For now we all need to look seriously at this proposed merger and it’s ramifications to our industry.
