Microsoft

Here is the link to Chip Griffin's 28 minute interview of me on "Conversations with Chip Griffin," an in-depth conversation about many of the reasons why I believe Google is becoming such a big problem and why I personally spend so much time focused on Google.

I believe you will find it an informative, interesting, and entertaining interview covering all things Google, the online economy, net neutrality etc.

• Enjoy!  

Microsoft's resumed interest in Yahoo's search business, suggests that Yahoo is close to outsourcing some of its search to Google. The antitrust implications of the world's #1 and #3 online advertising competitors, Google and Microsoft, fighting over the #2 competitor, Yahoo, has finally attracted serious media attention.

• A Financial Times editorial: "Search for a rival" asks: "How do you spell Googlopoly?" (I spelled it with an 'e' in my www.googleopoly.net Google-Doubleclick analysis and Senate testimony.)
  • The FT: "Any deal that lets Google supply part of Yahoo’s search advertising, however it is dressed up, must be bad for competition." 
• Today the New York Times', Steve Lohr, with contributions from Miguel Helft, produced the most in-depth reporting to date of the antitrust issues surrounding a Google-Yahoo search partnership: "Google Says It Will Defend Competitive Rationale of a Yahoo Deal."  

Now that the antitrust implications of this issue are beginning to get heightened media scrutiny, let me lay out my case of why a new Google-Yahoo search partnership is anti-competitive collusion and not benign collaboration. 

First, one must look at the competitive impact of a Google-Yahoo partnership.

Kudos to Richard Waters of FT for his insightful analysis "Google triumphant."

Let me highlight some key takeaways:

• “The failure of the Microsoft/Yahoo merger eliminates the biggest short-term threat” to Google’s unrivalled position on the web, says David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School. For now, its momentum “seems unstoppable”.

The article also provides excellent new detail to the thesis in my Googleopoly analysis and Senate testimony that Google's real dominance is as the dominant "market maker" for online advertising.

BBC News' Silicon Valley bureau is reporting on increasing "Alarm at Google-Yahoo partnering" and is highlighting a new letter to the DOJ Antitrust Division by 16 civil rights and rural advocacy bodies:

• "In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett, head of the Justice Department's anti-trust division, the coalition argues that such a deal would give Google almost 90% of the search advertising market and strengthen its influence over internet users' access to information.

  "We face a possible future in which no content could be seamlessly accessed without Google's permission," the letter states."

It appears others are noticing that Google's dominance of search, and online advertising threatens to control the monetization of all content on the Internet...

Last summer I wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times entitled: "The Ultimate Internet GateKeeper," which is what Google is quickly becoming...  

The American Consumer Intstitute just put out a good consumergram on: the DOJ investigation of the Google-Yahoo deal and asks if the search market has reached a tipping point.

• The ACI consumergram is asking the right questions.
• More entities should be, and will be, asking these types of questions going forward because the facts and Google's behavior will demand it.

As I explained in detail in my Googleopoly analysis, the search market has already tipped to Google and the Google-DoubleClick merger was a tipping point to enable Google to extend its market power in search advertising to display and online advertising as well.

As I explained the stakes of lax antitrust enforcement in my Senate Judiciary testimony:

"The Stakes of Lax Antitrust Enforcement: Will Google be enabled to become the:

• “Online-advertising bottleneck provider” picking Internet content winners and losers?

A Yahoo-Google search outsourcing pact arguably faces even more problems with European antitrust authorities than the reported U.S. DOJ antitrust investigation, for two reasons:

Dominant #1 Google, in calling #2 Yahoo to discuss a slow competitive search surrender by Yahoo to Google, in order to thwart a purchase of Yahoo by #3 Microsoft, apparently succeeded.

Interested observers in the Microsoft-Yahoo-Google-AOL-Ask.com-MySpace incestuous soap opera called search advertising, would be wise to bone up on the fine line between acceptable industry collaboration and illegal collusion, if recent reports prove true.

• The Wall Street Journal reports that Yahoo may be days away from announcing "an agreement to carry search advertisements from Google.." and that Google feels "that the upside is much greater than the potential downside" from the arrangement."  
• The Financial Times broke the story that the Department of Justice was investigating Google's interaction with Yahoo and that "the prosecution of collusion is a top priority."     

The fine line between collaboration and collusion. 

First, while many may be aware that a Google-Yahoo outsourcing deal "would likely attract intense antitrust scrutiny" there is precious little analysis on this linchpin issue -- hence the genesis of this piece.

I believe the pattern of Google becoming the outsourced search engine for most all of the Internet -- save for a few properties -- is one of the most important and least understood competitive Internet issues.  

The Hill has a good article highlighting the growing "battle" over "White Spaces", or the potential for use of the buffer spectrum bands in-between TV channels to ensure that there is no interference with TV signals.

The Wall Street Journal's scoop that Yahoo is considering a two week trial of outsourcing search to Google -- is also a trial balloon testing the FTC's antitrust mettle.

If you don't remember, the last sentence of the FTC's Majority opinion approving the Google-DoubleClick merger was a clear warning to Google:

• "We want to be clear, however, that we will closely watch these markets and, should Google engage in unlawful tying or other anticompetitive conduct, the Commission intends to act quickly."

Let's also put this into context.