President of Softbank declares war against Google?

March 17, 2008 6:52 PM

From an article titled "Softbank declares war against Google [jp]":

At the briefing on their financial results held on February 7th, Softbank president Masayoshi Son "declared war" against Google, the world’s biggest internet search company. Mr. Son has been known for his talent in coming up with grand concepts, but this time, his rival seems to be formidable. Does he have any chance of winning the war?

Mr. Son named Google as their rival at their result briefing. "Google will be our important competitor in the future" said the president. "In the past, Google was a mere subcontractor for Yahoo!, but somehow they outgrew considerably. I warned them (Yahoo! U.S.) once, but it was too late."

He is right. Google was once Yahoo's outsourced partner.

At first, I could not understand why Google would become Softbank's rival.

Recently, Google has been focusing on developing software for mobile phones and announced deals with NTT DoCoMo and KDDI (au), both of them are the rivals of Softbank. Google is now becoming a thereat to Softbank.

I see. Softbank thinks that Google might have a great influence on their mobile phone business.
According to the article, Mr. Son also said that "Those who win China and the mobile Internet market will be the ultimate winner".

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