Google CEO: Yahoo should keep independence

12/06/2008

Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt said on Wednesday that he believes that Yahoo becoming part of Microsoft would be detrimental to the marketplace.

The comments were made at a Newhouse School event in San Francisco where Mr Schmidt also voiced concerns about Microsoft's track record of monopolising the computer marked by reducing choice.

He believes that a merger between Microsoft and Yahoo would reduce choice within the search engine market in a similar way that Microsoft limited choice and controlled the computer market with its Windows platform.

"We think an independent Yahoo is better for competition, for innovation and so forth," Schmidt told Ken Auletta of The New Yorker.

He also denied that Google was trying to block Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo by seeking a partnership with Yahoo.

"It would seem to me that that decision is up to Yahoo, not to Google," Schmidt said.

Yahoo recently slapped a price tag of almost $50 billion on itself and this may prove prohibitive, even for the deep pockets of Bill Gates' Microsoft.