On Yahoo, Microsoft & Google

You’re probably well aware of Microsoft’s bid to buy Yahoo buy now, but this morning I read Google’s official reaction to the bid, and I’m a little stunned.

Google are clearly scared by the very notion of Microsoft being in control of Yahoo! This sentence in particular made me fall off my chair:

“While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.”

This, coming from the company that has a total monopoly on web search at the moment and frequently abuses that position. And let’s not forget that all these “open technologies” that Google so thoughtfully invests in are really just more ways to get access to your personal data, so it can show you more ads. Every last one of them.

Sometimes I think that Google has become so self obsessed that it’s losing track of reality.

Having said that…

I can’t think of two worse companies to be involved in right now than Microsoft and Yahoo. MS have failed to make the web work for them time and again, and Yahoo, while having wonderful intentions, have absolutely no sense of direction and just can’t seem to get their act together.

Yahoo constantly launch new products that never quite work with their existing products, yet manage to replicate 50% of the functionality of other parts of their network. They still make a fair amount of money from advertising, but I’m quite sure that’s simply because nobody can ever find what they’re looking for on Yahoo and end up just clicking an ad to get away from all the madness.

If MS and Y! do get together, you can be fairly certain that the result will be chaos. Whether or not the resulting company will survive long enough to take on Google remains to be seen. But I really don’t think Google have anything to worry about for the next couple of years.

2 thoughts on “On Yahoo, Microsoft & Google

  1. Totally agreed on all fronts!

    I’ll add that while there’s definitely hypocrisy in G’s statement, it’s still true 🙂

    For your readers unaware of MS’s black mark badge:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

    “Yahoo constantly launch new products that never quite work with their existing products, yet manage to replicate 50% of the functionality of other parts of their network….”

    LOL.

  2. Totally agree with you Dom!
    It’s rich coming from Google….who we all know are now going for world dominance, they are a far cry from the company they started out being.
    You know yourself the problems they caused at fotothing by demanding things were done the way THEY wanted.
    I’m sorry (no I’m not), if I’m paying then they don’t tell me what I can and can’t post!

    LOL.

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