14 DAY TRIAL // The Microsoft unsolicited bid for Yahoo! is the biggest thing to happen in the United States, except for the elections. And they both need about the same levers to be pulled in order to be successful. The only difference is that the lobbying for the White House happened not long ago, while lobbying for the deal to be accepted, be it accepted by the Sunnyvale-based company, has just started.
Microsoft was very careful and planned this pretty well, with people talking about it in Capitol Hill even before Friday, when the bid was made public. Google, on the other hand, known for its rather non-lobbying attitude, is trying to catch up. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, top Microsoft executives contacted the key lawmakers right away, by email and phone, but purely informal. The only catch was that they asked for a meeting to try and explain their vision of the merge (more like swallowing whole if you ask me) with Yahoo!, before any other hearing on the subject would take place.
"In lobbying parlance, this is known as 'checking the boxes' - meticulously informing powerful congressmen and senators about a transaction they might want to weigh in on down the road," according to The Washington Post.
Moreover, Google's 'intrusion' is very strange due to the fact that it is not directly involved in the transaction, but I guess it's payback time for the DoubleClick deal that Microsoft went out of its way to try and stop. I'm not sure whether the execs at the Redmond-based company know of this, but there's an old saying relating best to what Google is trying to pull, and it goes a little something like "Payback's a bitch!"
Google highlighted exactly the key areas in which a further analysis would be required, hurting Bill Gates' company where it hurts most. Yahoo! has not yet had its voice heard in official Washington circles.