Google vs. YahooSoft

Well, I suppose it was inevitable. Looks like Google’s taking action to try to block, or at least delay Microsoft’s potential merger with Yahoo.

Google’s lobbyists in Washington have also begun plotting how it might present a case against the transaction to lawmakers, people briefed on the company’s plans said.

…In Google’s statement on Sunday, it said that the potential purchase of Yahoo by Microsoft could pose threats to competition that needed to be examined by policy makers.

Google’s broadly worded concerns lacked detailed claims about any anticompetitive effects of the deal, and the company did not publicly ask regulators to take specific actions at this time.

“Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?” asked David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president and chief legal officer, writing on the company’s blog.

Oh yes, it’s very scary, in a legal-jargon sort of way. Inappropriate! Illegal! …Erm, possibly! Let’s be straight here: Google isn’t trying to block this merger out of any honest fear for the well being of the world’s netizens, nor out of real concern for the health of the competitive marketplace. They’re in this because a MicroHoo, or a YahooSoft, or a MiYa, or any other permutation indicating that the two tech titans have joined forces, represents a substantial threat to Google’s business.  This isn’t charity work, nor anything of the sort; it’s a company hoping to get a helping hand from the government and use regulation to protect its own business model. And I can’t help but suspect that it’s also designed as payback against Microsoft for attempting to derail Google’s own merger with DoubleClick, which was recently approved by the FTC.

At the end of the article, Carl Tobias, a Richmond law professor, indicates that anti-trust review of the deal could easily bleed into the next administration. I don’t doubt that this is the case, but I have to hope that, as Cord Blomquist notes over at TLF, the recently approved Google-DoubleClick might serve as precedent allowing any review to go through quickly.