Power politics
Any political scientist will tell you: where a single player looks to
be in a position to impose their will on the rest, the other players have a clear incentive to redress the balance of power [define].
On Friday Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo! Without ever using the G- word, Microsoft have made little bones of their rationale: to create a more effective competitor to Google and thereby grab a (much) bigger slice of the growing digital advertising pie.
The overall growth in digital is such that it can be easy to overlook just how dominant Google is: in the UK the total online advertising market in 2007 was worth around £2.7bn; Google’s share of this was 43%.
And yet it is Google who argue that a combined Microsoft-Yahoo juggernaut would be anti-competitive and stifle innovation.
Posted by: Sam at Lunch time on Wednesday, 6th February 2008
