Microsoft Parrots Google In Suggesting Tie-Up With Yahoo Violates Antitrust Laws

from the just-stay-quiet dept

Back in February, we pointed out that Google was playing with fire in suggesting that a Microsoft-Yahoo merger would violate antitrust laws. It seemed fairly obvious that those statements would come back to haunt Google -- a company many others have been accusing of antitrust violations. And, indeed, even with Microsoft still trying to buy Yahoo, Microsoft is now making nearly identical antitrust claims against Google concerning its ad deal with Yahoo. It's all legal posturing, of course, in an attempt to get the government to annoy a competitor. As Declan McCullagh points out at the link above, if either company really believes that the other was violating antitrust laws, it's perfectly free to file a private antitrust lawsuit. But, instead, both companies are playing a game in trying to get the government to be a pest for the other -- and now they get to use each other's scary monopoly language when tossing around accusations as well. So once again, might we suggest that both Microsoft and Google might be better off keeping their mouths zipped on anything involving antitrust violations from the other one?

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