Google Responds to Microsoft-Yahoo! Combination

David Drummond, senior vice president, corporate development, and chief legal officer, responds to Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo!. In part:

“… 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 … “

Read the entire letter on the official Google blog.