09.20.09

More Antitrust Pressure for Yahoo!-Microsoft, Google Blocked by MSDOJ

Posted in America, Antitrust, Apple, Europe, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 6:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft’s deal with Yahoo! is escalated for more regulators to scrutinise; the Microsoft Department of Justice (MSDOJ) blocks Google’s book deal

SEVERAL days ago we showed that Microsoft was unable to get its deal with Yahoo! approved before leaping a hurdle in the United States [1, 2, 3], not just in Europe. The issues are being studied both in the US and in Europe, whose regulators work independently on this.

There are newer reports about the situation in the US. The ones we found are from Information Week, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and others.

This is being handled by the Microsoft-influenced MSDOJ [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], which allegedly worked at Microsoft’s behest to block the Yahoo!-Google deal and also ignored Google’s complaints about Microsoft misconduct. Here is the MSDOJ blocking Google’s book deal and demanding a rewrite. The Register has the specifics:

The US Department of Justice has advised a federal court to reject Google’s $125m book-scanning settlement with American authors and publishers, citing concerns over class action, copyright, and antitrust law.

A week or so ago we made a comparison between what Microsoft did to Borland and what it’s currently doing to Yahoo! (see details at the bottom). One person sent us the following response:

[I] read your article (Comes Antitrust: How Microsoft Schemed to Destroy Borland (Like It Did Yahoo!)) and i think you should consider the Corel’s move in the Microsoft strategy to destroy Borland… their Linux projects merge, their split, etc. all the Inprise turbulence that Borland experienced is totally related. the Borland market share was at $ 21 or so in mid 2000 before the dotCOM crisis (check nasdaq.com historical charts), thats interesting to observe too. it finally has been sold last year to MicroFocus by $ 1,5 or so per share… thats totally absurd. what happended? the hurricane Bill heh. im a software developer working with Borland tools since early 90s and posted about all this subject many times in many forums in past years with no echo at all. you did a really good job puting the world to talk about this M$ abuse. i think you can build a book with this investigation.

The Microsoft-influenced FCC, which was assigned to handle Google's problem, has still made no concrete progress. This is so typical for the FCC.

Google has told the US Federal Communication Commission that Apple rejected the Google Voice and Google Lattitude apps it submitted to the iTunes App Store – though Apple says otherwise.

Apple and Google also compete in phones (Google uses Linux in Android) and as Palm has already learned, Apple plays hardball and even uses patents against Linux-powered products. █

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