This reaction is bad PR:
1. It gives the impression the company is run by bureaucrats.
2. It makes them look scared and defensive (and it could spook stock holders who will second guess the reasons)
3. Google has demonstrated it can beat Microsoft, their best weapon is innovation not legal knots, which will slow their own innovation down.
A Microsoft/Yahoo deal is good for the software industry, it will guarantee at minimum, a Coke vs Pepsi style duopoly rather than either a Google or Microsoft Monopoly.
Google’s reaction is not a conspiracy, but a function of what happens when you hire lots of lawyers – they start doing lawyer stuff all over the place, even if you hired them for another battle.
Having lived in the US for nearly 10 years now, I have come to the conclusion that the whole place operates pretty well, except the legal system requires a complete reboot, from the Supreme Court down.
America’s broken legal profession is the reason why health care costs twice as much as most other countries (pro bono work), why free markets are hampered (lawyer lobbyists) and why democracy is imperfect (Supreme Court).
It is also the reason why Google was hiring an army of top lawyers when the rose tinted, public perception was that Google’s hiring policy revolved almost exclusively around getting the best engineers.
Google needed these lawyers in a society where a big company will attract hundreds of opportunistic legal challenges from people hoping to get at some of its money and from the inevitable anti-trust action that will eventually come its way.
Unfortunately, expensive lawyers won’t just sit around fiddling their hourly sums, waiting for anti-trust action. And being lawyers they are very difficult to argue with.
Until now Google have maintained the image of a confident company with founder vision and a mantra of “don’t be evil”. With their Chief Legal Officer now issuing company statements has that now changed?
My guess is that they have been temporarily bamboozled by Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond and followed his tactically sophisticated but strategically naive advice.
From watching this PR gaff, Drummond is clearly not qualified to act as company spokesperson and perhaps Google’s lawyers need to be reigned in.
The best challenge to any Microsoft threat is innovation, something which Google can be confident about shouting from the hill tops.