Antitrust hearing to draw Yahoo, Microsoft, Google legal eagles

Top legal counsel for Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft will address a Congressional hearing Tuesday, as lawmakers examine the Yahoo-Google search advertising agreement and its potential anticompetitive effects on the future of Internet advertising.

The Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcomittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights will call Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith, Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan, and Google chief legal officer David Drummond to testify as witnesses.

Lawmakers, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, are examining whether Google's dominant market share in text ads that appear next to search results would raise antitrust issues, should it team up with the industry's No. 2 player Yahoo in the third-party advertising agreement.

Yahoo and Google have previously defended their agreement, noting the arrangement is flexible and would allow Yahoo to decide which, how often, and where Google's text ads would appear. Microsoft, however, contends it will raise prices for advertisers and further erode Yahoo's No. 2 position in search advertising as more of it goes to Google.

Other witnesses who will testify at the hearing include Matthew Crowley, chief marketing officer for Yellowpages.com, and Tim Carter, chief executive of Askthebuilder.com.

[JCPayne]

If an AT&T-BellSouth could merger could get the OK of the government.... Then so could a Google-Yahoo team up..... Microsoft has no case.

[brdrex]

It seems pretty ironic for microsoft to testify against anyone in an antitrust hearing

[Kwasiowusu]

Sounds fair to me, given that Google has been testifying against and attacking Microsoft nonstop both at the DOJ in this county, and in the EU for the past 5 years, constantly spewing out anti-Microsoft hate, slurs and slander. Its only fair that Microsoft give Google a taste of its own medicine, especially since a Google/Yahoo pact is clearly anti-consumer

[Kwasiowusu]

@JCPayne: Nonsense! AT&T/Bell South don't even come close to dominating 90% of the cell phone market ( In fact Verizon alone has nearly as many phone users as AT&T/Bell South, and we haven't even mentioned T-Mobile, Sprint etc). By contrast, Google/Yahoo will have 90% of the search market. Any pact that ends up with 90% of any market power, concentrated in the hands of 2 companies, has to be stopped by the DOJ. I don?t care how ?non-exclusive? the pact is. Who the heck else is Yahoo going to form a pact with, outside this ?non-exclusive? pact with Google, given that since Yang is barely on speaking terms with Microsoft, and outside Microsoft , there is only another 1% or so search market left.

[JCPayne]

Back@Kwasiowusu: For one thing I wasn't talking mobile phone service. I was talking the regular old POTS system. (And fiberoptics system that it is rapidly becoming instead.) The reason the national system was broken up into regional units was to remove domination of the whole national telephone system. Now, to allow Bellsouth and the former parts of SBC to merge together (albeit changing their name to AT&T) that does very little to preserve the competitive atmosphere in the United States when it comes to telecoms and high speed Internet even...

As far as Google-Yahoo cooperation.... What monopoly??? They have a technology that every other company and individual on the net has access to. **Pixels on a website** is not proprietary. Anybody can come up with an onlinead network .... You may have to be creative in getting sites to adopt yours along with Google or Yahoo but none the less it can be done if you're smart enough.

Clearly with all the resources Microsoft has-- they are admitting that they aren't smart enough to put together an ad network. Hence why they want to buy a ready-made one. (Yahoo's)..... So now we basically have Microsoft which launched a battle to take on Google. They decided they would take Yahoo's assets and try to dominate Google, so Google went in cut a deal with Yahoo themselves and Microsoft ends up as the odd-man out crying all those big crocodile tears and wants to launch a big court case to win back their plan of domination. BS I say...

[Penguinisto]

Agreed w/ JCPayne. I strongly suspect that MSFT's only role in this is to act as a spoiler. Given that MSFT is mostly on the defensive nowadays (when they should be busy trying to build core products that are actually worth something), I suspect that they'll lose this one too.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Classic Penguinisto.

Of course Microsoft wants to cause problems. They want to buy the search engine. I would have thought this was obvious to anyone with half a brain. Apple has done it to Microsoft,Yahoo has done it to Google, Google does it to Microsoft and the circle continues. It's called *business*.

[Wookiee-1138]

If Ballmer gets to address the committee, the company will be doomed.

[Kwasiowusu]

@JCPayne, It doesn?t make any difference whether you were talking about POTS or about wireless. An AT&T hookup with Bellsouth still doesn?t even come close to controlling 90% of the phone market, POTS or wireless. As at today, cable companies like Time Warner, offer full phone service , as well as broadband internet, in direct competition with phone companies like AT&T, not to mention, millions of Americans don?t even bother to sign up for wired phones anymore, simply preferring to use their cell phones for all their phone calls, saving themselves the extra expense of paying for a wired phone they hardly use. The old POTS phone lines are increasingly irrelevant. Revenues for both AT&T and Verizon, from wired POTS lines have been going down sharply for years. You simply can?t compare the dying POTS business to a Google/Yahoo pact that end up putting control of 90% of the very fast growing internet search in the hands of just 2 companies

[Kwasiowusu]

@JCPayne, this bit by you is even more laughable :? As far as Google-Yahoo cooperation.... What monopoly??? They have a technology that every other company and individual on the net has access to?.

You clearly have no idea what a monopoly is. Anyone can use Google/Yahoo search, so therefore its not a monopoly? Will you excusing me while I laugh? Unless you are gonna tell me that Google gives away the source code of their highly secret search algorithms to anyone to use as they like, then you are simply blowing smoke.

[The_Decider]

What does access to search algorithms have to do with anything?

MS used lock in to gain their illegal monopoly.

Where is the lock in here?

Stop being such an ignorant crybaby!

[Kwasiowusu]

@JCPayne , you also claim that: ?with all the resources Microsoft has-- they are admitting that they aren't smart enough to put together an ad network?
Yeah? You mean like how Google tried their own video sharing network, failed at it, and went and bought Youtube so they could dominate web video sharing ? Earth to JCPayne, companies regular buy other companies. Google has bought plenty of companies even in their short life span as a company. As for Microsoft launching a strong protest against a Google/Yahoo pact, it sounds very good to me. After all, Google has virtually taken permanent residence at the DOJ and at the EU Commission, constantly whining against non-existent ?crimes? that they claim Microsoft thinking of committing, its only fair that Microsoft strongly hit back against the very real danger of Google?s rabid monopolistic maneuvers, while at the same time giving Google, the same thing Google has been giving Microsoft in the last 5 years at least.

[The_Decider]

Where is the lock in that keeps customers dependent and keeps out competitors?

All this proves is what everyone already knew: MS can not succeed on a level playing field.

[Vegaman_Dan]

The_Decider wrote:

"All this proves is what everyone already knew: MS can not succeed on a level playing field. "

Well, except in the computer OS field, browser software, business class software, etc, etc, etc. Looks like they are succeeding quite well indeed. Now that may not last, but your comment isn't even close to reality.