Microsoft-Yahoo deal will never happen – MarketWatch — Here is a link to my Marketwatch column this week. If people think this deal is going to get past the EU regulators, they have not been paying attention.
The EU must have a red alert horn sounding in Brussels now that this deal was announced.
If the EU is already throwing a wet blanket on Microsoft’s party and, according to reports, plans more actions against the company regarding its browser strategy, then this merger will stop them in their tracks.
Heck, the directorate general for competition in the EU, Neelie Kroes, said she was going after the company in a recent BBC interview. She flatly said that the U.S. anti-trust folks are doing nothing about anything, so the EU has to step in.Now it’s always possible with Microsoft that this Yahoo deal was never meant to be finalized. This happened with the Microsoft attempt to buy Intuit some years back. It may be a ploy to steal Yahoo technology or key employees. It may be just to give the EU commissioners something big to chew on.
(You should note that with the Intuit deal Microsoft was never told not to do the deal. Once an investigation began, the company bailed out on its own. Why take a chance when you really do not want to do the deal in the first place? This model may be at work here.)
That said, this is a merger of two of the most popular Web destinations and search sites in the world as well as being dominant players in free email, search, groups and content delivery. How is this NOT an anti-trust violation in someone’s eyes?
