Slashdot Mirror
Google Kills Yahoo Ad Deal
mytrip writes "Google has pulled the plug on on a search-ad partnership with Yahoo that would have given Yahoo major new revenue but that raised antitrust concerns. 'After four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement,' said David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer in a blog post Wednesday."
Google's privileged position and the wealth it has provided them, I would argue, makes them have a special duty to society to CONTINUE to provide us with free, effective search engines. If Google were to suddenly require payment for their search service or were to even, for some inexplicable reason, decide to close up shop tomorrow, the federal government should step in and ensure they remain doing their duty until at least some real competition arises, or the government could just nationalize it if needed.
Companies like Google need to be watched like hawks and yes, even they need to be HEAVILY regulated to ensure they play nice with society. We do let them become as rich as they are already, after all.
There are very convincing arguments indicating Microsoft may never have intended to buy Yahoo:
In it, it appears that Yahoo is a loss-loss acquisition for Microsoft. It further appear very unlikely that a Microsoft acquisition can be accepted by antitrust authorities.
In that article, Microsoft have so far obtained the first part of what they aimed for; changing the board to a Microsoft friendly board, now comes step two which is not buying yahoo but making a deal to get access to the '361 patent', which the now short term focused board likely will accept to salvage their investment - notice many of those who bought into Yahoo due to the Microsoft deal are closer to day traders than investors... They will sell out Yahoo for quick cash then abandon the company.