Great article. Google has shown an amazingly tin ear about how to discuss this deal with regulators and the public, and it is coming back to haunt them. I wrote a post yesterday about Schmidt’s “time is money” quote. http://blog.actonline.org/2008.....atu-r.html One thing we’ve learned working on competition issues for the past 10 years is that “regulators generally don’t like being told they are irrelevant. It makes them insist on proving otherwise.” I would suggest, however, that it is inaccurate to blame all Schmidt’s blundering on being a political neophyte.

You are right to be surprised at those who are shocked by Microsoft and other competitor’s aggressive efforts on this issue. This is now a well-worn strategy in the tech industry. What you miss is that Microsoft et al LEARNED it from Eric Schmidt. Schmidt was responsible for creating the Novell’s lobbying campaign to bring Microsoft under antitrust scrutiny. He took the same strategy to his role at Sun Microsystems, and even lobbied regulators to go after Microsoft again from his position at Google.

Eric Schmidt wrote the playbook that is now being used against him. That’s one of the reasons why Google was actually making all the right moves earlier on in this process. http://blog.actonline.org/2008.....o-hea.html

Unfortunately, I think his tin ear is more likely the result of something more problematic for the company going forward: hubris. It is the problem that all immensely successful companies struggle with the first time regulators come knocking on their doors. And given Schmidt’s epic crusade against Microsoft, is it any wonder that he can’t comprehend how he too is now in the crosshairs? There is no way he could have become what he thought he despised…right?

Given that Eric is NOT naïve about the process, one might read his decision to publicly endorse Obama (although everyone already knew that he is a close adviser) as further proof that Google expects the DOJ to block this deal and force them to go to court. If he expects that his negotiations with the political appointees at the DOJ have crumbled, there is no downside to making his endorsement for Obama really public. All those appointees will be gone before this case goes to trial.

Mark Blafkin
Association for Competitive Technology