Friday, June 13, 2008

Yahoo, Google announce online ad alliance

Yahoo announced on Thursday afternoon that it had turned down an offer from Microsoft to buy its search business and entered in a 10-year advertising deal with Google, thereby ending a high-stakes takeover drama that has stretched nearly more than four months.

The investors are less confident about the deal and immediately after the announcement yahoo stock prices fall to 10 percent. But this is only a one side of the coin. On the other side this deal gives a much awaited relief to the Microsoft’s investors, saying that the firm has saved from giving a amount of 44.6 billion dollars in stock and cash to yahoo. This move clearly reflected on the NASDAQ also rising the Microsoft shares by 5 percent.

The deal lets yahoo to run ads supplied by Google alongside Yahoo Internet search results and on other some of its web properties in the United States and Canada. Yahoo CEO Yang emphasized that the deal with Google was not exclusive. It means Yahoo still can display paid search ad lists from any third party apart from Yahoo, Google.

But the deal with Google also includes a penalty to the firm. It means Yahoo has to pay a hefty amount of 250 million dollar to Microsoft. Microsoft is definitely enraged by this deal and warned that a Yahoo-Google partnership raises anti-trust concerns because it would cover some 90 percent of online advertising.

Here are the exact comments of some of the renowned people of this field.

Barak Orbach, a law professor at the University of Arizona, said there are reasons to be concerned from an antitrust perspective. And if Yahoo becomes dependent on revenue from Google, he warned, "Google can kill you and why would Google be interested in keeping you alive?"

But Glen Manishin, a partner with Duane Morris, said he thought the deal would increase competition because advertisers would be able to get roughly the same service from Yahoo or Google.

Bert Foer, president of the American Antitrust Institute, said he would be concerned that any Yahoo-Google alliance could reduce the number of "independent platforms" in the advertising market.

Whatever these guys say about the deal but in my opinion the online ad industry definitely suffer from it. In every search whether it is Google or Yahoo, there will be same advertisers and public will be left with very less choices. And let me know how you feel about that through the comments box.

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