Google and Yahoo will continue their transition to an ad partnership next month. This news is not new as this was reported back in June of 2008, the deal and suits coming against it are however. The Association of National Advertisers has voiced its concerns via a letter to government regulators concerning the partnership and what it could mean to the industry. The idea is that Google would place its ad services along side Yahoo search results in an attempt to have a strangle hold in search and ad marketing and would easily snuff out the little guys in search like Microsoft.
While Live.com is the 3rd largest search engine and is not close in users when it comes to Google, they have had a recent revamp and have been playing catchup for some time. Microsoft tried to purchase yahoo a few months back in a deal that would have paid Yahoo twice what it is worth today as their stocks have tumbled since the deal fell thru.
Per the statement from The Association of National Advertisers, "The Partnership will likely diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search advertising,"
Google does not have to wait for regulatory approval, but gave a three and a half month layover so anti-trust regulators could review the deal struck between the search giants.
Either way, competition is always a good thing, but in this case we will have to wait and see if good comes out of this partnership. After all, Google is big about not being evil.
