Ben Nuttall | Blog: A Day In The Life...

Yesterday, Google made the following statement on their blog, regarding the takeover of Yahoo! by Microsoft, and I thought it was a great article contemplating the future of the Internet:

From The Official Google Blog: Permalink for post

Yahoo! and the future of the Internet
2/03/2008 11:45:00 AM
Posted by David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

The openness of the Internet is what made Google -- and Yahoo! -- possible. A good idea that users find useful spreads quickly. Businesses can be created around the idea. Users benefit from constant innovation. It's what makes the Internet such an exciting place.

So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft -- despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses -- to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers.

This hostile bid was announced on Friday, so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first -- and should come first -- as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.

Permalink for post

And here's what I think of it all.

The Internet wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't such an open and innovative network of people with ideas. The very concept of anybody having the ability to share their idea by putting it together and letting people use it for free is an integral part of what the Internet is. By this I mean a programmer can think to himself "wouldn't it be good if I could have a portfolio of my photography and share it with others, let them give me comments, etc." and he can just write Flickr and invite people to use it for the same way he wants to use it, and the next thing you know it's a massive photo-sharing community with millions of users.

Similarly, that's how Google started; Larry Page and Sergey Brin simply wanted to make information available to users of the Internet, so they devised a new method of searching the web using their own special algorithms based on how they thought the right information would come up with any given search so that it would be a more useful search engine. The same for Facebook, which started as a one-person idea that it would be cool to keep in touch with fellow Harvard students online, then expanded to several other major Universities in the U.S., then all Higher Education institutes over the world, and as of September 2007, any person over the age of 13. Now there are over 60 million people using Facebook with over 65 billion pages viewed per month. I could also mention Wikipedia but I'm trying to keep this post short.

Note the use of Flickr (owned by Yahoo!) and Google of examples of the Internet at its best, along with Facebook and Wikipedia, which in my opinion are the four best things on the Internet today. Google expands to show Gmail, Blogger, Google Maps, YouTube, etc.)

So as Google says in the above article, this is not simply one company taking over another, it's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation. What would the Internet be like if it was controlled not by the everyday innovative programmer with an idea, but by the richest man in the world, out to make more money? We all know the situation with Windows, MS Office and every other Microsoft product or service; they strive to defeat competition, not allowing anyone to share their ideas, show how they would change it if they had the chance, unless they were in Bill's pocket. We all suffer the problems inherent in being forced to use certain software and paying the Earth for computers and upgrades for our old ones. We're having to put up with this influence from Microsoft with most of our computational pursuits as it is, but I fear that if the Internet fell into the hands of Mr. Gates it would no longer be open the way it is now. Google worries that Microsoft will do what it takes, exerting the same inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC market.

Google also mentions the fact that if you accumulate the number of email addresses controlled by Microsoft and Yahoo!, the two largest webmail and Instant Messenger services, just think about how many people's email accounts they have in their hands! Think about it, of all the people you know, how many have an @hotmail, @msn, @live, @yahoo address? They'll all be controlled by Microsoft if the takeover goes ahead as proposed. This means a heavy influence on everything inherent in the email process, and it doesn't get much more personal than a person's email inbox.

I hope reading this has made you think about how seriously some people take the choice, openness and innovation involved in using the Internet.

Google troubled by Microsoft move at BBC News: Link