Ian McAllister, Program Manager at Microsoft, blogs that he’s heard from a senior player at a “Tier 1″ Netco that, “… his company was willing to entertain ideas for working with Microsoft that would help our Search and/or advertising business, with one of the goals being to prevent Google from dominating those spaces even more than they are now.”

Richard MacManus of ZDNet speculates: “I too find it interesting how Google has become the most feared Internet company, a position Microsoft was in 10 years ago. Hmmm, I wonder who the ‘Tier 1′ Internet company is? Yahoo? IMHO they’re the only other bigco apart from Microsoft and Google that has a 99% chance of having you as a customer. Who else could it be?”

[Sourced from Computerworld, New Zealand]