House Hearing Set For Microsoft-Yahoo Deal
Antitrust and Competition Panel Will Examine Arguments For, Against Merger
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 2/3/2008 1:16:00 PM
Washington - A special House panel is planning to hold a hearing Friday on Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Internet portal Yahoo for $44.6 billion. The offer that has not been accepted by Yahoo's board, but the scale of the potential combination has raised many questions nonetheless.
House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) said the panel's Task Force on Antitrust and Competition Policy would hold the hearing. No witnesses were announced.
"Microsoft’s bid to acquire Yahoo is certainly one of the largest technology mergers we’ve seen and presents important issues regarding the competitive landscape of the Internet," Conyers said in a statement.
A potential Microsoft-Yahoo combination has Google concerned, according to a statement posted on the company's blog by David Drummond, Google's senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer.
Dummond speculated that Microsoft might use control of Yahoo to engage in anti-competitive conduct to undermine consumer choice in the Web-based email and instant messaging arenas.
"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 said, deploying against Microsoft some of the same Net Neutrality rhetoric used in lobbying struggles against cable and phone companies.
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