Doubleclick turned down Microsoft money? « Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger

Keep in mind all the speculation and rumor mongering on all of this is just that. parties are forbiden to disclose what went on in those negotiations, so in a sense, by listening to this stuff: Everything You Know is Wong!

That said, let's jump right in shall we?:

Is it just me or isn't it a little strange to have Microsoft legal in the form of Brad Smith calling around to journalists trying to sway public opinion on all of this? Don't they have other "departments" to do that sort of thing?

Has anyone thought of the possibility that had Microsoft won the bidding then there most certainly WOULD have been an antitrust issue, and without any prompting from Google?

Google is not a convicted monopolist, nor do they dominate search in the same way that Microsoft dominates the desktop. Microsoft would have done everyone a big favor, including their investors, had they voluntarily split the company into separate OS and Applications companies. Still not too late for that move either, but as Microsoft continues to lose mindshare the benefits diminish.

Maybe Microsoft legal meddled a bit too much in the negotiations and now they have a guilty conscience, aka fear of the next re-org. After all, they DID lose the antitrust suit, it was only sloppy sentencing that got them off the hook. And now with everyone re-evaluating DRM, MS selling copies of Windows for $3 there isn't much for MS legal to do other than work out cross licensing issues for patents. Must be hell.

As Eric Schmidt said in *this interview*:

Google promises not to lock users data into their products. To me, that has become the number one feature of any software I use.

While there is always reason to be skeptical when a vendor makes such a promise, we don't have to be skeptical if Microsoft were to make such a promise (which they haven't to my knowledge), we only have to look at their history: With almost every product, with every press release, with every membership on any standards body Microsoft's goal even beyond a desire to have the best products is to make it difficult if not impossible to use competing products side by side with monoliths such as Office and Exchange.

As someone already pointed out, I doubt that the sellers in this case really care what Microsoft's evil intent might have been, but the US Justice department might have, and that would have held up them getting their money.

There is relatively little merit in challenging the Google buy however, so this sale will sail (hehe) through by comparison to what would have happened if MS had won the bidding.