Turns out Google can't quite do everything it wants to. This article outlines how Google has scrapped it's proposed advertising partnership with Yahoo, anticipating that the objections of antitrust regulators might prove too strong to defeat. Not entirely surprising, I guess. Given that this partnership would have given them control of 90 percent of the search advertising market, I'm sure they would have been found in violation of some type of antitrust laws (not that I have extensive knowledge on the subject, but it seems like this would be a blatant violation).
I did learn a few interesting things that I didn't know. The authors, Joelle Tessler and Michael Liedtke, discuss the involvement of that other tech giant, Microsoft:
"The collapse of the Google-Yahoo alliance could become a coup for Microsoft.
Although it has publicly said it's no longer interested in buying Yahoo, Microsoft spent a lot of time and money trying to keep Google and Yahoo from coming together.
The world's largest software maker provided evidence that helped persuade regulators that the partnership would diminish competition. Microsoft also helped orchestrate the campaign that prompted major advertisers to lodge complaints against the partnership."
The plot thickens...
Apparently Yahoo is really struggling, and some of their board members are pissed that they didn't sell to Microsoft back in May, when their shares were at $33 a piece. Now, they're down to $14.20, and apparently considering approaching AOL/Time Warner about an acquisition.
Also news to me was the connection between Larry and Sergey and Jerry Yang:
"The Mountain View, Calif.-based company's main incentive for entering the deal was to keep Yahoo out of Microsoft's hands. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin also wanted to help Yahoo founders Jerry Yang and David Filo, who had encouraged them to turn their search engine into a business more than a decade ago."
Anyway, just a small roadblock on Google's path to conquering the universe...but a noteworthy one.
1 comment:
I Can't help but wonder if it's not part of a "scorched earth" policy by both Microsoft and Google. Neither wants the other to have it, so the only solution is to destroy it (or let it die).
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