Thursday, September 3, 2009
Mr. Ellison Asks That His Burgers Be Served With Freedom Fries Until Further Notice
Approved without incident by Sun shareholders in July and the U.S. Justice Department in August, Oracle’s planned $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems seemed poised to easily pass muster with European regulators as well. Sadly for Oracle, that’s not how things have played out. Citing “serious concerns” about the deal’s effect on competition in the market for databases, the European Commission has opened an in-depth investigation into it.
Get this: Microsoft has been holding secret “Screw Google” meetings in Washington at which the company schemes to undermine Google and prevent it from subsuming the businesses that took it decades to build. Those ruthless, conniving bastards. Strategizing to thwart a rival.
As the Google Book Search Settlement nears a Sept. 4 deadline for rights-holders to opt out of the deal, some powerful interests are rallying to oppose it. Rallied by the Internet Archive and veteran Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer Gary Reback, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are forming a coalition called the Open Book Alliance. Its purpose: To make the case to an already concerned Justice Department that the $125 million settlement is anticompetitive.
So Google has finally copped to developing an operating system–Chrome OS, a software platform “created for people who spend most of their time on the Web, and…designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.” It is an extraordinary market play. And an unsettling one. For it seeks to place Google, which already collects vast amounts of data about our Internet use, at the very center of our information experience. The privacy implications of that are, of course, horrendous. 
Earlier this year, Christine Varney, the new antitrust chief at the Department of Justice, said she planned to return the DOJ to a policy that led to landmark antitrust suits like the one against Microsoft in the ’90s. And she delivered on that promise in short order. Since her confirmation in late April, the DOJ has seen a sort of Trustbuster renaissance. It has begun inquiring into potentially anticompetitive recruiting practices in Silicon Valley. It’s opened an investigation into the Google Books settlement. And now it’s scrutinizing cellphone exclusivity deals, like the lucrative one between Apple and AT&T.
Looks like the fireworks have begun early in Mountain View. On Thursday afternoon, the Department of Justice officially notified Google that it is investigating its book deal for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The notification after the jump.
Oracle was “almost” able to resolve the Justice Department’s concerns over its proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Almost, but not quite. The 30-day review period for the $7.4 billion deal was set to expire midnight Friday. But instead of approving it, the DOJ extended its examination, issuing a second request for more information.
Back in 2005, Google was represented in Washington by a lone staffer. The company’s political innocence was something of a joke among seasoned beltway players and it didn’t much seem to care. Google was far too busy organizing the world’s information to pay attention to Washington.
According to security experts, Web-hosting outfit McColo is responsible for enabling the broadcast of more than 75 percent of all spam globally. Its client list is a rogues gallery of bad-guy syndicates involved in everything from botnets to counterfeit pharmaceuticals and kiddie porn. So how is it that MoColo’s ISPs, Hurricane Electric and Global Crossing, were unaware of that until notified by a Washington Post reporter?
Now that Yahoo is trading at $12.63 in an economy that’s falling Homer Simpson-style down the long rocky slope of economic collapse, some of the company’s institutional investors are hoping to convince it to sell itself to Microsoft again.
