Microsoft the Antitrust CrusaderIt is hard to figure out who to take with a bigger grain of salt: Microsoft and AT&T, or the politicians the companies testified in front of today.
At issue is Google’s $3 billion pending acquisition of online-advertising firm DoubleClick. Opponents of the deal, including Microsoft and AT&T, say the combination will concentrate too much of the online-ad market in Google’s hands. Google says that’s nonsense and its current online-advertising effort is an apple to DoubleClick’s orange.
It is hard to completely take Microsoft at its word, given the famous antitrust problems it has had over the years. Consider also that Microsoft lost as a bidder for DoubleClick. The software titan also has a history of locking horns with Google, which filed an antitrust-related complaint this summer contending that Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system violated the terms of Microsoft’s 2002 federal antitrust settlement. (The matter has since been resolved.)
But AT&T is simply a neutral observer, looking make sure that as its supplier of ads, Google isn’t in a position to unfairly raise prices, right? Not so fast. As this Wall Street Journal article today points out, AT&T and Google themselves have been bickering lately, about net neutrality, the principle that all Internet sites should be equally accessible to any Web user.
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