Google's Brin fears the Microhoo borg
Speaking at an event for the Google Lunar X Prize, Google co-founder Sergey Brin reiterates his company's position on a Microsoft-Yahoo union.
"The Internet has evolved from open standards, having a diversity of companies. And when you start to have companies that control the operating system, control the browsers, they really tie up the top Web sites, and can be used to manipulate stuff in various ways. I think that's unnerving," Brin said.
It's the same argument Google used when the Microsoft bid for Yahoo was first unleashed.
In the letter from February 3 titled, "Yahoo and the future of the Internet," David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, said that Microsoft's bid "raises troubling questions," pointing to the company's monopolistic past.
"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," Drummond said in the letter.
Google's strategy is to plant the seeds of doubt, like Hillary Clinton claiming on a daily basis that her Democratic rival, Barack Obama, isn't experienced enough to hold the nation's highest office. If you keep repeating it, people might believe it. But both Google and Clinton will have a hard time making their charges stick.
In Google's case, having Microsoft with a dominant position in browsers and traditional operating systems and gaining share via Yahoo in search, ads, and unique users who consume its services is unnerving--even for a company that has had a meteoric rise and more than 60 percent of the super-efficient and profitable search ad business.