Gawker: valleywag, brad smith

Google, Yahoo lawyers sell lawmakers on ad deal, while Microsoft and AT&T cry foul

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:20:00 EDT

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo lawyers yesterday answered lawmakers' questions about the effect Yahoo's deal to outsource some of its search to Google will have on the search ad market. Microsoft's top lawyer, Brad Smith, said the deal will eliminate Yahoo as a competitor from the market and drive up prices for advertisers. He told lawmakers Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang admitted as much to Microsoft representatives in a June 8 meeting in San Jose.

(Yang) said 'If we do this deal with Google, Yahoo will become part of Google's pole and Microsoft,' he said, 'would not be strong enough in this market to remain a pole of its own.

Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan disputed Smith's retelling of the meeting. Google's top lawyer, David Drummond, told lawmakers that "Google and Yahoo will remain fierce competitors. This agreement will not remove a competitor from the field."

Advertisers disagree with Drummond. Ad buyers have told us that the Yahoo-Google deal will likely drive the prices they pay for search ads up by 25 percent. Yesterday, Matthew Crowley, the chief marketing officer of AT&T subsidiary Yellowpages.com, echoed the sentiment.

If [the Google Yahoo search deal] is allowed to happen, it seems obvious that some advertisers will have a diminishing ability to play Google and Yahoo against one another in a competitive marketplace. The result would be less choice and higher prices for advertisers — especially smaller-scale advertisers that do not have the heft or resources to ensure the best deal possible. The agreement poses a significant danger not only to competition for internet search advertising and to the broader internet economy, but to Yahoo's continued viability as a strong independent competitor.

BoomTown's Kara Swisher caught up with each company's legal man in D.C. in the video embedded up top. Our favorite part: Googler David Drummond's slick-as-Vaseline false modesty over Google's prospects in the brand advertising market, around the 1:30 mark.

How to steer a Yahoo-Google deal around the feds

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:40:00 EDT

Analysts say that allowing Google to serve its ads on Yahoo search pages would immediately boost search revenues by a third and Yahoo's stock by $5 a share. Problem is, Microsoft's top lawyer, Brad Smith, already promised to make a regulatory stink about such a deal, saying it would give Google control over 90 percent of the search advertising market. But a source involved with the discussions between Yahoo and Google says there's a way Yahoo could steer clear of antitrust trouble.

The answer is to create an open marketplace for its search results, inviting Google and Microsoft to bid on placing ads on them. Yahoo might even keep its own search-marketing platform up and running. It's just the kind of open-with-a-capital-O move Yahoo president Sue Decker likes to talk about on quarterly analyst calls. Of course, that assumes Google values keeping Yahoo out of Microsoft's control more than an exclusive deal for all of Yahoo's search business. Which, come to think of it, it likely does.

Microsoft: A Yahoo-Google partnership gives Google 90 percent of the market

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:20:00 EDT

Word that Yahoo plans to test Google search ads has Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and Microsoft PR all fired up. "Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90 percent of the search advertising market in Google's hands," Smith said in a statement.

This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo! We will assess closely all of our options. Our proposal remains the only alternative put forward that offers Yahoo! shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.

Smith once told regulators that to allow Google to merge with DoubleClick was to give it control over 80 percent of the market. That rhetoric didn't stop a merger. But maybe an extra 10 percent will do the trick this time.

Microsoft to Google: Nuh uh, you're a bigger threat to freedom than we are

Jordan Golson — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:50:34 EST

That just about sums up Microsoft's response after Google's top lawyer laid the smack down on the Microsofties. In a short missive, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith says roughly " You're kicking our ass in search and advertising, so who are you to talk about monopolies on the Internet?" Read the full release after the jump.

Statement from Brad Smith, General Counsel, Microsoft
REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 3, 2008 - The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising. The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet.
Today, Google is the dominant search engine and advertising company on the Web. Google has amassed about 75 percent of paid search revenues worldwide and its share continues to grow. According to published reports, Google currently has more than 65 percent search query share in the U.S. and more than 85 percent in Europe. Microsoft and Yahoo! on the other hand have roughly 30 percent combined in the U.S. and approximately 10 percent combined in Europe.

Microsoft is committed to openness, innovation, and the protection of privacy on the Internet. We believe that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will advance these goals.

Will Intuit's new CEO prove a Google guy?

Owen Thomas — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:57:24 EDT

It's odd, sometimes, the contortions reporters will go through to make a story out of nothing — especially when they miss the real one. Take, for example, this report from IDG News about the planned departure of Intuit CEO Steve Bennett. The subhead of the article: "Intuit chief executive's resignation is not tied to April tax database snafu." The first sentence: "Four months after a database problem prevented thousands of U.S. users from paying their taxes on time, Intuit Inc.'s chief executive announced plans to step down." Obsessed with an embarrassing, expensive, but ultimately meaningless, glitch in Intuit's tax-prep software, IDG misses what's interesting about Bennett stepping down in December to make way for Intuit SVP Brad Smith.

Intuit has long had unusually close links with Google. The company's chairman, Bill Campbell, though not credited for it, has long been an important advisor to Google CEO Eric Schmidt and company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. And the two companies share a campus in Mountain View.

Smith, currently in charge of the company's QuickBooks accounting software and related small-business products, will become CEO in January 1. And if anything, you can expect relations between Intuit and Google to become tighter. Smith, after all, helped negotiate a deal between the companies to integrate QuickBooks and AdWords, Google's text ads that have proved popular with small businesses.

If anything, in fact, Smith would be the logical architect of a merger between Google and Intuit. They share a common enemy in Microsoft. Google has demonstrated skills in Web-based software, while Intuit has an extremely loyal small-business customer base.

And best of all, buying Intuit would give Google much-needed real estate adjacent to its current headquarters. Even with plans to slow down out-of-control hiring, Google could use more room close to home. And that's one thing only Intuit can offer.