zafile - 11:03 pm on Feb 3, 2008 (gmt 0)

Yahoo and the Future of the Internet: "Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets."

A typical comment made an anti-Microsoft zealot.

It's funny that David Drummond, Google's Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, makes such an statement in complete oposition to the fact he has a job thanks to the wide spread of the PC.

The wide spread of the PC allowed the expansion of the Internet.

Bill Gates said in December 1995:

"In any phenomenon like this [The Internet] you get long periods of time where people anticipate it, and yet there isn't critical mass. There's not enough users, so there isn't enough content, there's not enough content, so there isn't enough users."

"If you go back 20 years ago to the original vision of Microsoft - a computer on every desk and every house - there was a clear view that eventually computers would be connected together, be dialing up, and there'd be a pool of available information. And to me it's actually amazing how long it's taken for communications costs to come down for this to become a key application of the PC."

The PC allowed a critical mass to make the Internet what it is today. To bad anti-Microsoft zealots such as David Drummond can't accept this fact.

Even with Microsoft's influence over the PC, enough successful companies grew out of the Internet phenomenon: Amazon, Ebay, the ISPs, etc, etc, etc.

Still, Yahoo is basically just a publisher of content made by others. News, music, videos come from third parties.