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The In-Progress Plot To Kill Google
twitter writes "Four years after Steve Ballmer vowed to kill Google, Wired details Microsoft's, AT&T's, and big publishers' ongoing slog. The story is filled with astroturfers, lobbyists and others spending millions to manufacture FUD about privacy and monopoly in order to protect the obsolete business models of their patrons, who are mostly known for progress-halting monopoly and invasion of privacy. Their greatest coup to date was preventing Google from rescuing Yahoo."
No doubt. But keeping Yahoo alive and independent of Microsoft was and still is in Google's best interests, whether you call it a 'rescuing' or not. Microsoft wants Yahoo's search because their own sucks and they know it. Even Ballmer has admitted that his own impatience caused Microsoft to fail in search. Yahoo is the next best technology to Google's.
So of course Google wanted to 'rescue' Yahoo from the jaws of Microsoft.
Never attribute to heroism what can be explained by simple self-interest. ;)
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I think that a lot of people think Google are good purely because they are now largely seen as the anti-MS... no other company has done remotely as much to scare the people at Redmond, and for that they should definitely be applauded. Paving the way to unseat a monopoly - however (un)likely the eventual unseating may be - is no small accomplishment and one that legions of us, pissed off with having to fund a monopolist all the time, should be quite appreciative of.
I do agree with your points though - I can just understand why people do like Google. There is also the fact that their mainstream tools usually just work. Can you say the same of MS?