Posted by David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

The openness of the Net is what made Google — and Yahoo! — possible. A good notion that users find useful spreads quickly. Businesses can be created around the concept. Users benefit from constant innovation. It’s what makes the Net such an exciting place.

So Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. that is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking by another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the World Wide Web: openness and innovation.

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence by the World Wide Web that it did with the PC? While the World Wide Web rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to set up proprietary monopolies — and thereupon leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft — despite its legacy of serious legal

and regulatory offenses — to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Web? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web mail accounts. And amidst them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Web. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ mail, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions — and consumers deserve satisfying answers.

This hostile bid was announced on Friday, so there is plenty of moment for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Web openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Web users come first — and should come first — as the merits of that proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.

Orginal post by Karen