Finally Microsoft issued a formal statement regarding the Google-Yahoo search ad deal. Brad Smith, Microsoft Corp. senior vice president and general counsel, questioned the legality of the deal before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommitte on Antitrust and the House Judiciary Committee Antitrust Task Force. Mr. Smith also emphasized on the damage that the said deal would cause to the online advertising and innovation competition.
If search is the gateway to the Internet, and most believe that it is, this deal will put Google in a position to own that gateway and the information that flows through it,” said Smith. “Never before in the history of advertising has one company been in the position to control prices on up to 90 percent of advertising in a single medium. Not in television, not in radio, not in publishing. It should not happen on the Internet.
“When Yahoo! talks about this deal generating up to $800 million in additional revenue, that’s money out of the pockets of American businesses, big and small, who will pay higher prices for the very same ads they buy from Yahoo! today,” said Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith also emphasize the issue on privacy control should the Google-Yahoo search ad deal continues,
“If one company – Google – controls up to 90 percent of online search advertising it will have a complete picture of your online activities. If that happens, Congress won’t need to enact a federal privacy policy, we will already have a national privacy policy – Google’s privacy policy.”
I like how Mr. Smith put it – “Google’s privacy policy.” Maybe Google should starting drafting this policy, as it is most likely to control most of the web activities anyway. Come to think of it, even without the Yahoo deal, doesn’t Google has access to users’ online activities?
Would the US House and Senate Judiciary Committeess give warrant to Microsoft’ s concerns and start taking a closer look at the Yahoo-Google deal? Or will this airing of concern just fall on deaf ears? Yahoo is aiming for the moon here, if it wants the respective committees in both the House and Senate to look into the Google-Yahoo deal, it would do so without even soliciting for Microsoft’s concerns.
Again, another false move from Microsoft.
