Opinion: Yahoo! Google too!

They must think consumers were born yesterday. OK, maybe they’re right. Google and Yahoo! have worked out some sort of deal which somehow makes them both richer without either of them actually doing anything they weren’t already doing.

But they’re not ‘merging’ they’re staying independent. And this won’t affect competition. You know this is true because Google said so and anyway they’re asking the US authorities for permission, despite not requiring permission. Say what?

For Google’s part, one of its senior veeps issued a blog, which no doubt his legal team has said constitutes “personal opinion” so they company can’t be held to it later, claiming that everyone does this strange back room dealing and it doesn’t affect competition.

He cited the example of Toyota selling its hybrid engines to General Motors as proof you can do this and still compete. Despite admitting that these two car makers are the global No 1 and No 2, the veep seemed to not care how selling the same product but pretending its from two separate vendors is good for compeition.

He continued on this “same is good” theme citing the fact that Canon now makes the guts of HP’s laser printers as another “proof” that there is lots of competition. Oh really? If this is true, why not put a sticker on the HP boxes, “powered by Canon” or a sticker on the GM hybrid cars “powered by Toyota” and see what consumers think of the competition.

Anyway, who needs competition when your government is happy to hand out millions of dollars on your behalf to help you decide which technology is best? Maybe we should have Apple Macs built by Lenovo. Oh, wait….