Google-Yahoo Ad Partnership Raises Anti-Trust Concerns

[mandy]

Ultimately, the Yahoo-Google deal raises two antitrust questions, one concerning the short run and the other concerning the long run, said Keith Hylton, a law professor at Boston Unversity and author of the textbook, Antitrust Law: Economic Theory and Common Law.

"The long-run question is whether consumers are harmed by a plan that effectively locks up the largest non-Google search platform in existence," he told the E-Commerce Times. "Presumably, if the two had not entered into the agreement, Microsoft or some other firm would have acquired Yahoo. An independent acquirer would have used Yahoo's search platform to try to compete directly against Google."

That is unlikely to happen under the current arrangement, Hylton observed. The proposed plan effectively postpones the threat of any serious competition developing against Google, and the antitrust investigation will probably consider whether the agreement was adopted for the purpose of discouraging a rival firm -- such as Microsoft -- from purchasing Yahoo...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/Clamor-A...64520.html

[mandy]

Google, the company with an unsatisfactory BBB rating due to the horrendous customer service offered by its AdWords unit, has pulled out of a proposed partnership with Yahoo's ad network.  Yahoo advertisers should breathe a sigh of relief that they won't be subjected to AdWords woefully incompetent outsourced customer service 'cut and paste emails r us' staff.

Dear Advertiser,

We wanted to reach out to you directly regarding Google's decision, announced earlier today, to terminate the advertising services agreement that the companies announced in June. Yahoo! continues to believe in the benefits of the agreement, and is disappointed that Google has elected to withdraw from the agreement rather than defend it in court. Google notified Yahoo! of its refusal to move forward with implementation of the agreement following indication from the Department of Justice that it would seek to block it, despite Yahoo!'s proposed revisions to address the DOJ's and advertisers' concerns.

While disappointed by this turn of events, we are writing to you to reaffirm our commitment to working together to drive your advertising results, and to provide the continued leadership you expect. The fact is that this deal was incremental to Yahoo!'s product roadmap and does not change Yahoo!'s commitment to innovation and growth in search.

As you know, Yahoo! has long focused on how to improve the user, advertiser and publisher experience. We will continue to enable you to easily connect with the consumers you most want to reach, by creating a more open, efficient and effective marketplace for advertisers and publishers. We also plan to continue to provide the cutting-edge advances in products, platforms and services that the industry needs and expects, by leading the way in helping advertisers navigate the converging contextual and search ad markets. Finally, we remain committed to innovation in anticipating the needs of Yahoo!'s audiences--one of the largest and most engaged populations of consumers on the web--by creating the unique context that delivers results for brand advertisers online.

In short, even in the absence of a commercial agreement with Google, we intend to become an ever-stronger player in online advertising. Our certainty on this front comes from the progress we continue to make in many areas, not the least of which are the significant innovations we're making in search. We continually optimize our algorithmic and sponsored search. In fact, in 2008 alone, we have developed and launched hundreds of improvements to our search engine, including index expansions and updates, ranking models and performance tuning. Each of these features is designed to improve search quality and deliver a more relevant search experience to our users.

Particularly in this economic climate, identifying and making rich and deep connections with your target audience is of the utmost importance. No company is better prepared to help you succeed in that quest than Yahoo!. In addition to being the largest aggregate publisher in the U.S., we are #1 or #2 across virtually every key category, including being #1 in the categories of News, Sports, Finance and Entertainment, and we're putting our leadership to work for you every day.

By offering extensive reach to consumers, breakthrough advances in technology, simplifying inefficiencies in the advertising process, putting new and industry-recognized talent in place, and providing tailored solutions across our network to meet your needs, we are well prepared to provide you with the most significant return on your investment.

We are looking forward to continuing to work with you in building your business. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me or anyone on our team with your questions, or to discuss your challenges. We're open to a productive dialogue with you in the service of continuing our successful work together.