I have personally met some more junior Microsoft people – and they seemed much more open and collaborative. But nothing has changed when you get above the lower two or three levels.
Can other startups post their experiences with Msoft at senior levels?

Microsoft has a demonstrative *and proven* track record of anti-competitive practises.

As a result of the culture clash and Msoft’s lack of media friendliness, they are also likely to destroy Yahoo! even if unintentionally. Two or three years down the line the audience eyeball share of a combined Microsoft/Yahoo will most certainly be smaller. Though they might well make more money, the consumer will be worse off.

From Google’s pov, as others have commented, this takeover could really benefit them. The deal size and mismatch of both cultures and technologies will distract both parties for years to come, leaving the space wide open to Google to continue their excellent execution – so long as they don’t also get tempted to do a huge takeover.

Google’s complaint, as I read it, is not that a Microsoft/Yahoo combo would be “too large” (in any particular market area), but that Microsoft has a history of anti-consumer tactics that a larger share would allow it to leverage.

This argument seems at least plausible. There is little evidence Google attempts to harm consumers (and much evidence it attempts not to), while Microsoft has a long history of consumer harm.

More importantly, unlike with Windows and Office, Google’s search share (what Arrington says is “what matters”) is not aided by network effects and externalities. A larger Microsoft + Yahoo combo does not decrease the cost of a consumer changing search engines, since that cost is already nearly zero. Therefore, I fail to see how this deal is important to “keep Google honest” even if you’re cynical enough to believe that despite their totally different behavior throughout their histories, Google and Microsoft are actually just as “evil” in their motivations.

People who say that seem to have no idea of what Microsoft has done to IT in the past two decades. It wasn’t the fact the Microsoft was so big and powerful, it’s what they did with that power that made Microsoft something Google has never been, and most likely never will be, if only because of the enormous cultural differences between the two.

Microsoft is not about “real competition”, Microsoft is all about eliminating competition, making competition impossible. Yes, Google may be able to compete with MicroHoo, but what about the rest of us?

It’s rare to see anyone in the valley challenge Google’s intentions.

It’s rare that someone steps back from the widely held belief that companies in Silicon Valley can “Do No Evil” and Microsoft is always evil.

It’s intellectually lazy to lump every market that Microsoft is in together to analyze the impact of a deal with Yahoo on the applicable market. Clearly, Microsoft has not leveraged a monopoly in the operating system market into a monopoly in the advertising space.

Regardless of whether a 75% market share in a market constitutes a monopoly, if you think that Google doesn’t use that 75% market power to their benefit, aggressively and arrogantly, you haven’t sit on the other side of the table from them.

If I were a Yahoo shareholder, I’d want to think long and hard about whether Google really is a white knight riding to my rescue, or the vulture waiting to pick at my carcass when Microsoft walks away.

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Scott Barnes
Microsoft.

That pretty much sums it up IMHO

http://www.uruk...;size=1&l=e

Pretty evil if you ask me.