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Microsoft Bid for Yahoo - Interesting Development...

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Renegade:
Yes... EU = European Union... why would you think EULA?
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I didn't... I was just wondering why Renegade feels that having the EU stop Microsoft's bid to compete with Google via purchasing Yahoo! is very sick! It occurred to me that he may have interpreted EU as M$' end user agreement or something...
-Darwin (February 29, 2008, 04:03 PM)
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I didn't mistake EU for EULA.

The thing is that the EU is very socialist and controlling in a lot of ways. Their answer to a problem is to create new legistation that simply makes things more difficult (same goes for Canada). I'm vehemently against creating new laws to solve problems at every turn. It's not a good thing. It merely restricts freedoms and leads down a very dark path.

Google is far more dangerous than MS. They really are the major 800 lb gorilla right now, or they soon will be. Neither MS nor Yahoo are fairing very well against them in the ad market, and some real competition for Google is needed to keep the market in check. A combined MS & Yahoo would have a much better chance at offering advertisers and content providers some real choice. Right now your 3 choices are Google, Google, and Google. If you want to stretch things, you do have a fourth option: Google.

If someone has THE perfect solution to compete with Google, AND 100 million dollars to get started, then there may be hope. But that's not likely. The most realistic approach to the problem is to create another 800 lb gorilla to keep the other 800 lb gorilla in check.

Google is driving up prices for consumers indirectly. Just go to any web master forum and look for people complaining about their minimum bids being jacked up.

As an experiment, you can try creating some AdWords ads. You'll quickly find that bidding for "super esoteric keword combination that nobody bids on or cares about but has a small amount of traffic and is worth about $0.10 when bidding" will actually have a minimum bid of at least $0.50, and more likely much higher. It's quite common to see minimum bids skyrocket to $5.00 or higher -- for 1 click...

That has the effect of driving people out of the market, or jacking up prices to cover the ad costs.

Having the EU block things won't fix the problem. It will only make it worse. Legislation isn't the answer to the problem. This problem needs to be addressed in the business domain, not the judicial domain. And the ONLY thing in sight that can address the problem is an MS and Yahoo deal.

Darwin:
OK - nicely stated! Thank you for clearing that up. I agree with you about the futility of trying to legislate this problem away.

wraith808:
Sorry where are the rabid competitors for Windows? Mac has about 8% share of desktops in the US (rather less in the EU) and Linux has a very small following on desktops (though it does compete well in the server market).
-Carol Haynes (February 29, 2008, 06:26 PM)
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Just because they don't have market share, doesn't make them any less of a rabid competitor.  The cutesy PC vs Mac ads are directly aimed at their competitor's weaknesses in a way that you usually don't see in official ads.

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