Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

MS Urges Antitrust Scuttling of DoubleClick Deal

Posted by kdawson on from the pot-and-kettle dept.

Microsoft contends that Google's $3.1 billion deal to buy DoubleClick would hurt competition in the online advertising market. And Microsoft expects AT&T, Yahoo, and other companies to join them next week in protesting the proposed sale.

3 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Re:As the say... by spottedkangaroo · · Score: 5, Informative

    And Microsoft have been duly punished.

    I remember MS being convicted. I do not remember them being punished. IIRC, the administration changed and MS got away nearly unscathed.

    --
    Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
  2. Re:MS knows what it is talking about by Zerth · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, actually, they are in the ad business, and I say you can't be a trust in an industry where MS is a competitor:)

    They recently stopped using Yahoo's ad service and started their own. And it sucks.

    You'd think being johnny-come-lately that they'd, you know, copy the good features of the other big 2 and support things like being able to upload entire campaigns for large #'s of keywords and ads. Nope, the best they can do is single ad groups, one at a time, in two sheets, one for words and one for ads, which isn't really faster than cutting and pasting them into a web form.

    I recently had to change the text on several hundred ads and instead of merely importing a spreadsheet of the changes, perhaps generated for my by Google or Yahoo (which they do, despite the fact that it lets their customers try other ad sellers that support such a feature:) It took me about 10 minutes each on google and yahoo. I won't be done with MS adcenter for at least 2 days.

  3. Re:Wait... wasn't Microsoft.. by Chyeld · · Score: 5, Informative

    A monopoly is still a monopoly, whether or not you choose to call it a "natural monopoly" or not. Monopolies are not illegal. Abusing the powers being one gives you, is. MS has, I've yet to see Google do so. So while it doesn't matter what the type of monopoly is, it does matter who it is.

    Would it really be better if Google wiped Yahoo, MS et al off the online ads map?

    Having seen MS and Yahoo's business practices, in a word, YES.

    You can say "yes, but MS would do this and that", which would probably turn out to be true, but we have to face the fact that it's hypocrisy to cry foul whenever MS does something and just say "phew, at least it's not Microsoft" when Google does something almost just as bad. Name one company Google has snuffed out of business using their current position as dominate leader in the search engine business. Name one competitor they've screwed over by pulling dirty tricks like MS has. I've seen none of this, have you?

    Before Microsoft became the god of the OS world, they pulled every trick in the book to try to kill people in the markets they wanted to be in. They killed the DOS market by tying sales of Windows 3.1 to MSDOS. When that was blocked, they released Win95 under the lie that MSDOS was integrated into it and not actually a separate component (which was later proven a lie when people found out how to replace MSDOS with other versions.) Almost the same thing happened in the IE/Netscape war for dominance.

    And when Microsoft entered the system utilities world, they killed of their competitors by outright stealing. Can you honestly say you've seen something like the STAC/Doublespace issue pop up with Google?

    There is a very legitimate excuse to say "at least it's not Microsoft", whatever Google's 'evil' has been, it's been outside their business practices towards their competitors. Their mistakes have been working with people the Western world frowns upon. Not trying to channel the spirits of every robber baron that's ever lived. There is no reason to currently think they would turn into the next Microsoft.