(Yang) said 'If we do this deal with Google, Yahoo will become part of Google's pole and Microsoft,' he said, 'would not be strong enough in this market to remain a pole of its own.
Analysts say that allowing Google to serve its ads on Yahoo search pages would immediately boost search revenues by a third and Yahoo's stock by $5 a share. Problem is, Microsoft's top lawyer, Brad Smith, already promised to make a regulatory stink about such a deal, saying it would give Google control over 90 percent of the search advertising market. But a source involved with the discussions between Yahoo and Google says there's a way Yahoo could steer clear of antitrust trouble.
That just about sums up Microsoft's response after Google's top lawyer laid the smack down on the Microsofties. In a short missive, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith says roughly " You're kicking our ass in search and advertising, so who are you to talk about monopolies on the Internet?" Read the full release after the jump.
It's odd, sometimes, the contortions reporters will go through to make a story out of nothing — especially when they miss the real one. Take, for example, this report from IDG News about the planned departure of Intuit CEO Steve Bennett. The subhead of the article: "Intuit chief executive's resignation is not tied to April tax database snafu." The first sentence: "Four months after a database problem prevented thousands of U.S. users from paying their taxes on time, Intuit Inc.'s chief executive announced plans to step down." Obsessed with an embarrassing, expensive, but ultimately meaningless, glitch in Intuit's tax-prep software, IDG misses what's interesting about Bennett stepping down in December to make way for Intuit SVP Brad Smith.
