Oh dear my heart bleeds for poor old M$, don't like it do they when Microshafting happens to them :)

'Microsoft grumbled that the search, advertising and IM deal between its two biggest internet rivals, which was inked last Thursday, would “limit choices for advertisers and publishers” and “destroy a competitive alternative.”'

Pot

Kettle

Black.

but of course it is ok if Microsoft buy out Yahoo and do do everything they are claiming as it is them doing it then so that makes it fine.

calling the kettle black!! (Note, this is a TRADITIONAL saying, no racial connotations are intended!)

Now, I'm not suggesting that this hook-up is a 'good thing' by any means, but seriously, BG & Co, you are in NO position to make this kind of comment.

Key points:

"limit choices"

“destroy a competitive alternative"

"what amounts to a price-fixing agreement"

"hamstring competition"

"consolidate more than 90 per cent of the [...] market"

These are all mainstays of Micro$not's business practices, and are not to be performed by anyone else.

I'd rather see Google and Yahoo! merging, than an M$ takeover. In fact, Google-Yahoo are much more compatible in technology base and mindsets than M$-Yahoo.

All the Google and Yahoo stuff for mobile phones, for example, will run seamlessly with my Blackberry, while the MS stuff (MSN Spaces, specifically) will rebuff me with "OS not compatible" crap. As long as Microsoft doesn't have a big share into the web, you can guarantee that most websites can run on other browsers than IE. I'm pretty sure that if MS takes over Yahoo! they'd use it to push their god-awful Silverlight stuff, that only runs in Windows/IE.

Cry all you want, Ballmer. We don't care anyway.

And what sauce would you like on your goose, Mr Ballmer..?

>>"Our position has been clear since April that any deal between these two companies will increase prices for advertisers and start to consolidate more than 90 per cent of the search advertising market in Google's hands," he said.

90% share? That would be terrible. Of course 90% share in the OS market is OK, just not in search apparently.

A quote from Bill Gates.

"The world is unfair, get use to it".

It applies to Microsoft too.

ok, so I've finally come to terms with leccy, mobe, and lappy, but please ban the following from commentspace:

M$, Micro$oft, MicroShit, Micro$hit, MicroShaft, Micro$haft, Crapple, CrapOS, Crapintosh, WinBlows, Slowlaris, Screwgle, Farceberk, BSd, hpox, lunix, ReiserFS, and any other shitty non-pun?

And for those who think that this kind of carry on is funny/insightful/useful, can they please just fuck off to appleinsider, zdnet or slashdot?

... Oh no wait! Thats now "Desperate Desperate Desperate"

Microsoft and Yahoo joining forces could have actually created competition for Google.

Google is far and away the biggest search engine around, and thus them teaming up with their competition IS anti-competitive.

Competition always breeds innovation, once you get a monopoly, you get Lazy (Microsoft being a good example), whats to stop Google getting the same?

I think the subject says enough. :)