.jpg "Why Facebook borrowed $100 million for servers")
Valleywag
Sergey Brin told press gathered at the Googleplex yesterday that he finds Microsoft's Yahoo takeover attempt "unnerving." Because see, the Internet is meant to be wide open and not controlled by one powerful company, Brin told the AP.
When you start to have companies that control the operating system, control the browsers, they really tie up the top Web sites, and can be used to manipulate stuff in various ways. I think that's unnerving.The quote reads like an email to Washington antitrust regulators. And it's meant to. But Sergey, you don't need to manipulate the press to give Microsoft as hard of a time it gave Google-DoubleClick in Washington. Just invite your FTC lackeys back to Aspen for another ski trip. (Photo by jdlasica)
Comments
No site owns the web. the carriers do. therefore, it's never 'wide open'.
That's a quote that is highly likely to haunt him in the future.
@Arnaud H: How about right now?
First, I'm not sure how MS acquiring Yahoo would affect IE's market share. At one time, his statement was true, and Microsoft did indeed use their weight to produce websites designed for IE and their OS market share to drive IE adoption. After the antitrust suits, IE has become less integrated with Windows, and even msn.com renders correctly in Firefox.
Predicting something that already happened is bad enough, but when the extension of that prediction applies to Google--yes, haunt him in the future is the right description. Is this really any different from Google wanting to control search, email, and word processors/spreadsheets? Google pushing web based apps is just the Web 2.0 version of MS pushing IE. Google may not have market share, now, but IE was once a joke when compared to Mosaic/Netscape.
Oh, sorry, I forgot: Google does no evil. My bad.
Who does he think he's fooling? Everybody knows GOOG is the new MSFT of the Internet. I'm not just talking insiders like us, I'm talking EVERYBODY.
They are digging their own grave bitching about MSFT. Serge can look forward to his company run by a bunch of antitrust lawyers pretty soon.
Every move they make will need to be "approved" by the laywers who need to interpret a bunch of vague laws and rules.
Want to add a spell checker to Google? Can't do that because you'll wipe out all of the little spell checker software makers and they'll say you're extending your monopoly. You can try buying them all up, but it turns out that entrepreneurs figure out this gig pretty quick and you'll find that everything you want to do by a strange coincidence has a dozen companies that are doing the same thing and are complaining to the govt about your evil empire.
Maybe you should ask folks at--GASP!--Microsoft about what they might have done differently to keep the govt out of their lives for a little while longer. I bet they wish they positioned themselves differently than they did.
The shoe fits. Google refuses to wear it at its own peril. Better to get in front of this problem and try to effect the outcome vs. keeping your head in the sand and hoping it will go away. It won't. Human nature hasn't changed in the ten years since MSFT was in this position.
@ReversePundit: Funny that he fails to mention that Google acquiring Yahoo would have more people crying "monopoly" than Microsoft acquiring Yahoo.
Wouldn't playing possum entail Brin not expressing his opinion?
Comment on this post
Reply by EmailLogin with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?