Wtf?! The unlikely guardians of competition
This is the weirdest story I've read in a while. Check out who is objecting to the emerging acquisition of yahoo by google:
Alarm at Google Yahoo partnering
Regulators in the US are being urged to investigate any potential online advertising and search partnership between Google and Yahoo.
The call by a coalition of 16 American civil rights and rural advocacy bodies [DC: What do civil rights and rural advocacy?!?? bodies have to do with competition?] comes despite the fact no firm deal has actually been announced.
"We all suffer in such mega mergers," Gary Flowers of the Black Leadership Forum told BBC News.
[The] coalition is made up of the League of Rural Voters, the National Black Chamber of Commerce and the American Agriculture Movement.It also includes the Black Leadership Forum, an umbrella group of 36 civil rights organisations including the NAACP and the National Urban League.
League of Rural Voters' executive director Niel Ritchie claims that the do-no-evil mantra may no longer apply in today's marketplace in which Google's reach is apparently without bound, touching more and more aspects of our everyday lives."We believe the government should give this agreement very careful scrutiny," he says.
Can someone explain me what rural advocacy and agriculture groups have to do with the Google-Yahoo! merger?
My view is that any concerned individual or group, whatever their name or primary interest, is entitled to speak up about issues that could affect society. Sure, it might seem a bit weird that it's not a special interest group hammering the same point for once, but I don't think that means their opinion should be discounted.