Google CEO: Microhoo "Bad for the Internet"?Google CEO: Microhoo "Bad for the Internet"?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that Google was "concerned" that a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo could threaten the "openness" of the internet.Schmidt pointed to some of Microsoft's past behavior -- "the things that it has done that have been so difficult for everyone" -- and said he was worried that increasing Microsoft's leverage over the Internet would lead to the same kinds of proprietary actions. "We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the internet, but I doubt it would be," he said. "We are concerned that there are things Microsoft could do that would be bad for the internet."

Schmidt is not alone at Google: David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, worried last month in a company blog that after the acquisition of Yahoo, Microsoft could "exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC." "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," Drummond wrote.

The future of the Internet isn't Google's only concern, of course. Earlier this month, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer swore that his company would gain online advertising and searching market share against Google if it took his "last breath" at the company.BBC News, Computerworld