Google Takes Friendly Fire

As the competition in the sector intensifies, partner companies will find it even easier to play the major search providers off each other. Indeed, the Comcast move seems to be a page right out of the AT&T(T Quote) playbook. Just 10 days ago, news surfaced that the telecom giant would re-evaluate the terms of its partnership with Yahoo!.

The hardball negotiating tactics by partners could add up to a real headache for Google. The company also has agreements with Time Warner's(TWX Quote) AOL division, News Corp.'s(NWS Quote) MySpace and the popular Firefox browser that help drive searches.

Skeptics would argue that public barbs by companies like Comcast and Ask.com may amount to little more than posturing in the hopes of getting more leverage. Google, after all, is known for the quality of its search results, and that the ads it serves up next to its results bring in more revenue than those of its rivals. Even Diller said that "it will take a lot" to drive Ask to another search service.

But while Google's commanding position in the market makes it harder to jilt, it also makes the search giant a bigger target for rivals looking to curb its power. A recent guerilla ad campaign in the U.K. questioning whether one company -- Google -- should have as much control online as it does was traced back to none other than Ask.

In a media interview last week, Ask CEO Jim Lanzone admitted that his company was behind the campaign, saying the move was driven in part because of the difficulty Ask had at breaking into the U.K. market because of Google's dominance.

In other words, being too good may end up making Google not good enough to be a partner for other threatened Internet companies.