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Google And Microsoft Cross Swords Over Yahoo!
watzinaneihm writes "In a blog post Google has called Yahoo/Microsoft merger bad for the future of the internet. It is worried about the number of email and IM accounts this merged entity would control. Microsoft has countered with the argument that Google is actually the big bully in this instance, with most of the search market already tied up. The New York Times, in the meantime, has accused Google of a Microsoft fixation."
Not really sure it would be a fixation, maybe a kind of envy complex... When you see something and wonder why you don't have it too you develop a complex of envy to obtain it in one way or another... Right Sigmund?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
...I'm actually going to have to side with Microsoft on this one. On rather, I'm going to side with no one. The idea that this would make Microsoft a bigger "monopoly" is unfounded because neither Microsoft nor Yahoo! has anywhere close to the highest marketshare of online searches or advertising. If we're so concerned about monopolies, competition in the field can only be a good thing. And at the rate it was going, unless something like this happened, no one would ever be able to stop Google.
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I love how Microsoft's take on the merger is that it will create more competition. Why is it that any time a big company swallows a smaller one, we're told that having fewer players in the field will increase competition? Do people actually buy that line of bull? Someone get these guys a dictionary.
Google has mind share. When you compare the search engines they're all pretty much equally garbage.
The day they're buying Ubuntu (and make a *nix based system part of their supported portfolio) would be the day that marks their end. Microsoft would be losing their most prized possession: their locked-in market.
So Google voice a legitimate worry about Microsoft, a company convicted of abusing its monopoly status in one market to dominate other markets, buying a company that would give them a large portion of a market and they are the bad guys in this? Lets be honest what Google is saying is the first thing that came to the minds of everyone in IT who are not on the Microsoft payroll. We all know how Microsoft works and we can all hazard a guess at what their aims are in attempting to purchase Yahoo. It is doubtful the good of the internet and consumers are particularly high on their list of priorities.
Google has a Microsoft fixation? Ok, I'm not willing to argue that, but I think the fixation railroad runs both ways. It's pretty obvious that Microsoft is more than a little pre-occupied with Google.
When it's Godzilla vs Godzilla, Tokyo gets trashed either way.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Microsoft is the guys here with the massive OEM deals to push their products onto the market, and using the economy gained from that to make "impossible" deals when they're thirsty of making a deal.
What has Google made? The main things would be... A search engine that beats the pants off Microsoft, designed while they were still a startup company? It hasn't really evolved much since that (actually that's a bit to my dismay). Oh, and their ads. Thanks to their (mostly) text-based ads, they found a niche and sucessfully expanded upon it as (surprise, surprise!) people found those ads more likeable than the banner shit spewn forth by competing advertising programs.
Anyway, trying to take a neutral stance on this, I think the thing here is that regardless if Microsoft and Yahoo merges, or Google and Yahoo does it, it will form a company with a very powerful web platform. So maybe neither should be allowed to? But if one should be, I think both should. Microsoft's abuse of their position is another matter than the power in the market this merge would form IMHO, and they should be caught for that stuff when that happens.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
See? See? The bad guy (Microsoft) kidnaps the princess (Yahoo!) and The valiant knight (Google) comes to the rescue! And there was much epic battling. Then the princess stabbed both in the back. The end.
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
People can switch search-engines every day, but groups not so. How many groups or mailing lists do you belong to? How many of those are yahoo groups. I would be very surprised if anyone belonged to half a dozen groups or more without at least one being yahoo.
Moving a group is difficult, and it need the owner to want to. If you are a member you could set up a rival, but the chances are you would end up talking to yourself. Now suppose those groups switched to Silverlight (for a richer user experience) and required IE7 running on windows to access. This would be a big downer for any competitive desktops.
if anyone in the computing industry doesn't have a Microsoft fixation, you should probably stay away from them. You never know what MS will do next and given their market share that isn't exactly something you want to be oblivious to.
Microsoft has a google fixation? Or envy complex??
MS woke up late to the internet. Once they woke up, their attempts at gaining a foothold were more or less unsuccessful. The offer on Yahoo is just them realizing that their web strategy needs a course correction pronto. They've built a good search engine (live.com) and ad-platform, but they can't monetize it right now because nobody goes there. Acquiring Yahoo is one of they ways to solve that problem. Yahoo has other assets that will tie in well with a software+services strategy.
It's really that simple. MS realizes that its business model is under threat, and it's making adjustments before the pain is felt rather than after. No fixation, no envy -- just business as usual.
The only "do no evil" that Google cares about is "do no evil to the stockholders and profits."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Google's entire annual revenue fits into Microsoft's profit margin alone. Google is small compared to Microsoft. A little hard to be the 'big bully'. And unlike Microsoft's more diversified revenue stream, Google pretty much relies on one comparatively fragile market, online advertising, a market Microsoft wasn't even interested in until long after Google dmeonstrated it could be so lucrative.
If MS wants to beat Google at online marketing, they should offer better deals to affiliate sites and advertisers.
Google is right to object -- and to block by helping Yahoo -- because Microsoft is an intensively abusive monopoly by culture and history and conviction. They're the neighborhood predator, and everyone living there knows it.
Google has become successful by being very good at what it does and does it without abusing its power. Microsoft, well, if the Gentle Reader can't recite a litany of even the most recent abuses, it's useless for me to list them. Go, Google.
Just something that I have not seen noted anywhere yet, but google's dominance of the search market is earned and is also fragile. I remember using yahoo and thinking it was great, then I moved over to AltaVista, then onto google, my loyalty only exists as long as I do not find a better way of getting the answers I want.
Google is my preferred search engine and has been almost exclusively for quite some time now, but I am not tied to them in the same way I am with email and instant messaging. The potential merger between Yahoo and MicroSoft is not something I think would be good for anyone, will it improve searches? nope, MicroSoft spent a huge sum relaunching their search product, and I did try it but I still found google faster and returned the better information. As for advertising revenue, googles advertising model means they make the most money because most people use their service. Should they fail to be the best search engine, they will see drops in revenue to match. So I am not concerned by their advertising side.
I like Yahoo and use several of their services, I fear (which is unfounded except from MicroSoft's reputation and track record) that should they get control of Yahoo it will be a bad day for the internet. I fear it would not take very long before the feeling of being able to trust Yahoo is tarnished (whether fair or not) by Microsoft's reputation and actions.
Sadly with the premium that has been placed on Yahoo it may turn into a hostile take over by Microsoft as if they really want it who is really going to turn down the cash?
My hope is that Yahoo's board say no and Microsoft back off not wanting to add to their negative press and image. This could be good for Yahoo as it may show that Yahoo still has a high value suggesting time could be given to management to make the changes necessary to the business and have time for a return to be seen.
As for competition, 3 big companies trying to do the best search or 2, which gives the best environment for innovation?
Just my 7 pence
"No fixation, no envy -- just business as usual." We know what Steve Ballmer thinks of Google: Ballmer Throws A Chair At "F*ing Google".
....
Quotes:
At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."
Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay... Among other things, Mr. Ballmer told me that "Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards."
Maybe not fixation, maybe not envy, but SOME kind of mental illness.
Remember, what is a self-evident truth to you is not to everyone. The anti-Microsoft sentiment is almost exclusive to the geek crowd, which is a teeny tiny minority, and it's hardly universal among even us.
MS woke up late to the internet. Once they woke up, their attempts at gaining a foothold were more or less unsuccessful.
Indeed. However this move is possibly their most bone-headed reaction yet. I have no doubt it's straight from the brain of Steve I'm going to fucking kill Google Ballmer. Acquiring Yahoo is another attempt to tame the internet and tie it to Windows services, and it will fail as dismally as the last few attempts, because the internet (and Yahoo) is the antithesis of Microsoft.
Users on the web don't like being 'monetized' unless there's something in it for them, and they'll resist attempts by MS to change that balance of power. Those attempts by MS to exploit users are inevitable because it's just not in Ballmer's (or Microsoft's) DNA to let users get something for nothing.
For Microsoft as a company, swallowing Yahoo whole is going to create many more problems than it solves. It will drive the good engineers to Google (very few of Yahoo's people could thrive under the entirely different MS culture), it'll give Microsoft lots of new properties which directly compete with their own offerings, it'll make all the MS Live employees very nervous and trigger more internal turf wars, and finally, it will land MS with servicing lots of disgruntled users on services like Flickr who will desert in droves at the first attempt to corral them into an MS only internet (as MS is prone to do - see ActiveX, IE, Silverlight, etc). Their business model (lock in the users and milk them for profits) isn't under threat, it's past its sell by date; you can't continually abuse your users forever and expect them never to walk away, particularly not if you're trying to operate as a web services company, and I have my doubts that Ballmer et al will ever learn this lesson. They've done too well in the past by applying it to abandon it now.
Still, if you don't work at Yahoo, and you're not keen on Microsoft dominating yet another market, this foolish move is heartening news. Google must be celebrating the beginning of the end of the dark ages of the internet. This will tie up MS for years.
I won't try to defend their China policy. There aren't a lot of things they CAN do, but that doesn't mean they have to do business there. If you want to compare the two, though, find me a company that does business in China and DOESN'T do those things. Hint: Microsoft does business in China and they also run a search engine.
However, in another way, Google is FAR less evil than Microsoft. Microsoft dominates markets and then controls them for its own benefit. They always expand by acquiring someone's product and then use it to drive out as much of the competition as possible.
Google, on the other hand, opens things up for customer benefit, like they're doing with Android in the cell phone market. They're working as an anti-Microsoft to compete by opening markets where customers are unhappy and being used.
In other words, I have plenty of reason to prefer Google to Microsoft. Sure, someday they may well lose their leadership and turn evil. It's a very real possibility. But I won't hate them for their success until they use it for evil.
What was that Nietzsche quote Slashdot had at the bottom of every page last week?
"Cynicism is the only way base souls can approach truth."