Google thinks Microsoft is trying to take over the Internet

In My Humble Opinion
1

http://techland.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/02/03/google-will-microsoft-monopolize-the-internet/

After MS made an offer to buy Yahoo, Google thinks they’re trying to take over the Internet like they took over the PC. Their main problems with it are that MS would then control an “overwhelming share of instant messaging and web e-mail acounts.”

I don’t know about you, but this kind of thinking makes me think Google’s “Don’t be evil” philosophy isn’t what it used to be.

Would it suck a little bit if the “big three” of webmail became the big two, sure it would. But saying it threatens the Internet is absurd. I gotta say, I lost a little respect for Google today.

2

I think the Microsoftisation of Yahoo would make both even worse than they already are. I can’t see that this will help either of them achieve much. What they both ought to do is take some leaves out of Google’s books and be more user-friendly, but I really don’t think that’s going to happen.

This could even be Yahoo’s death knell.

I am not a Business major, I’m just pulling these predictions out of my butt

3

Google’s simply repaying MackrelSlurp’s protestation when Google bought DoubleClick. It’s nothing to get your panties in a twist about.

4

I don’t see the point of MS buying Yahoo. What does Yahoo actually have that MS needs (rather than wants)? This smacks to me of the Time Warner / AOL merger.

5

Having taken a course in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) I can tell you this is a really bad thing.

The fewer the major search engines, the worse it is.

There are currently no regulations on search engines. You might say, “so what?”

Example:
Say you want to find a hat for your pet gerbil.
You type in “hats for gerbils” on your search engine, and it should, theoretically, find the best site for you to find your little hat.
Wrong.
It will find the site based upon their own criteria.

Mary Smith knits her hats for gerbils and has a very nice website advertising the fact, but she is listed on page 395. Why?

Nobody knows for sure, but perhaps Mary didn’t use the correct Meta tags and keywords. Maybe her front page didn’t match the keywords. Maybe her site is too new, or maybe she is not a paid advertiser.

Ethically, Mary’s site should be on top of the list - that is, after all, the sole purpose of her website. But the search engine can pick whoever the hell they want to select.

In the “old days”, the search engines selected site based upon relevance and popularity.

Currently, search engines still have the “generic” site, ranked by popularity, on the left side of the page and the “paid advertisers” on the right…who knows what will happen when suddenly only two major search engines have total control of what you find when you type in your request.

“hats for gerbils”

You find:
Pet Smart
Pet Co
Walmart
Target
KMart
and 395 pages later, “Mary Smith’s Hats For Gerbils”.

Trust me, if it ever gets down to Google and Microsoft as the only two search engines, you can pretty much forget fair play when it comes to finding what you want to find through them.

6

just the Internet?

7

I think Google have to make a show of looking concerned but really, like in another recent thread, who cares about Yahoo any more? I bet that privately they would welcome Microsoft blowing some of their cash mountain on it.

Re monopolies in the search engine market, what are the barriers to entry like? Google itself, after all, came seemingly out of nowhere because it provided better search results than the big boys of the time. I don’t see why other people can’t copy the Google innovations of MapReduce and datacentres made out of racks of commodity PCs.

8

Google’s R&D budget is something like $12 billion/yr. To successfully take them on, you’re gong to have to pony up an expensive chunk of change, and then what’s to prevent them from buying you out?

9

Saying no?

10

OK, but we already imaging a situation in which that they would be deliberately spoiling their search results, giving the honest search engine an advantage. However much they spend on R&D, won’t people prefer the search engine where DMark’s gerbil hat lady comes top of the list?

11

If a company is publicly held, it’s not that simple. That’s what hostile takeovers are about, after all - some third party buys up a majority of the stock, whether the company involved wants it or not.

12

If they know about it, yeah, but getting people to shift habits can be difficult, especially when Google’s so dominant (let’s not forget that it’s name has now become a verb).

13

Microsoft has been trying to get its hands on the Internet for years.

Anyone remember MS FrontPage with Micosoft’s own version of bloated HTML mark up? MS’s first attempt at shaping the Web in its own image.

How about ActiveX: The MS version of Java. Another attempt to get the web to be more how MS envisioned it.

How about MSN that came out a few years ago? Its search engine was supposed to revolutionize the web. It didn’t, which may be why MS is looking at Yahoo now.

I expect that if MS does end up buying Yahoo, Yahoo will die and something else will come up to fill in the gap. Maybe Ask.com. The nice thing about the Web is that there is always new technology coming up that will always rival Microsoft.

I’m not all that concerned.

14

MS (as other large companies) has a history of buying up successful products, milking them, then killing them in favor of an in-house product. Compare FoxBase->Access.

Then the market should be wide open for a new search engine that plays fair. For a while, at least.

15

I’m still mourning the death of Hotbot.

16

Before that MSN was going to be an alternative to the internet, providing only proprietary content much like AOL did. Caught on the hop by the explosion of interest and usage on the 'net, Bill G seemed to believe they only had to build one and they would come. The next year the original MSN became “MSN Classic” and MSN 2.0 came out, including gasp access to the internet! and the original concept was dead.

17

If you don’t think Microsoft is trying to take over the internet, you are incredibly naive.

18

You think a company can “take over the Internet”, which one of us is the naive one?

The Internet is more than just the search engines that help people find things and there are dozens of huge sites that will always provide an alternative.

19

The acquirer doesn’t even need to invest in the company. The Board of Directors has a fiduciary responsibility to the company, and to the shareholders to maximize their value. If management/the Board can’t demonstrate that the stock would do better as an independent company, they are required to accept a takeover bid. Sure it’s easier to get the bid in play and force a vote on the issue if you’re a shareholder, but it’s not a prerequisite for a takeover.

Part of Microsoft’s strategy with the open letter to Yahoo’s Board was to mention past negotiations and offers. That will put a great deal of pressure on Yahoo’s Board to accept the offer, since earnings (and therefore the share price) hasn’t shown that their stated strategy has been working over the past few years.

The fact is that Yahoo can’t really compete with Google in any long-term sense. There isn’t really any room for two major ad-supported companies when one of them is Google, and all of Yahoo’s attempts to monetize other properties have failed. Microsoft can afford to play in the same arena only because they don’t have to be as profitable [in that business] to stay in the game at the same scale.

20

Yahoo to Microsoft: Drop dead.