online

The long-awaited collaboration of Microsoft and Yahoo on search has the tech business community abuzz. CEI analysts Wayne Crews and Ryan Young made their original statements here. Media outlets immediately took note, as seen in this Investor’s Business Daily story (posted, fitting enough, at Yahoo Finance) from yesterday:

Ryan Young, a fellow of regulatory studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, says the deal should be approved.

“It will make Google stay on its toes,” he said. “Bing and Yahoo should improve from the proposed partnership. This is how a competitive, contestable market works.”

We also got some love from Erika Morphy at E-commerce Times in her story today:

The Obama Administration is taking a harder line on antitrust issues than in the past, which could prove to be a wild card, noted Ryan Radia, information policy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, although he’s also convinced that the deal will go through.

“Antitrust administrators are looking to make headlines now,” Radia told the E-Commerce Times, pointing to investigations he dubbed “dubious,” such as the probe into the Google book deal or the inquiry into Silicon Valley employment practices.

“The latest line of attack is that lack of regulation and enforcement is behind the recession,” he said.

[...]

Microsoft has been battling EU antitrust charges for years, CEI’s Radia noted, with the most recent involving accusations that it violated EU antitrust law by bundling Internet Explorer with its Windows operating system.

“It is going to be more of a problem over there than with U.S. regulatory authorities,” he predicted.

National Journal’s Tech Daily Dose also noted our advice to regulators to keep their snouts out of the deal:

“Our subcommittee is concerned about competition issues in these markets because of the potentially far-reaching consequences for consumers and advertisers, and our concern about dampening the innovation we have come to expect from a competitive high-tech industry,” [Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb] Kohl said in a statement. Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee ranking member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he did not see “any immediate yellow flags” from an antitrust front. Competitive Enterprise Institute argued regulators “can best serve consumer interests by leaving well enough alone.”

Who knows where we’ll pop up next!