According to a report in Reuters, the Justice Department is reportedly looking into antitrust implications of Yahoo’s decision to outsource some of its online ads to Google.
As we reported a couple of weeks ago, Yahoo tested about 3% of its traffic by having Google serve up ads, instead of its own system.
According to the report The Justice Department is concerned that a two-week test run that Yahoo initiated with Google may violate antitrust laws.
An unnamed source told Reuters that the government is particularly concerned about an alleged phone call from Google’s Chief Executive Eric Schmidt to Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang, in which he offered his help in dodging a Microsoft merger.
Antitrust concerns about a relationship between Google and Yahoo have existed ever since rumors about the possibility came to the surface. Many observers have maintained that a deal between the two wouldn’t fly because of Google’s dominance in the search market.
We have stated all along that such a deal would be diasterous to domainers leaving us only one choice to monatize domains with using PPC programs. Other publishers would be placed in a similar bad situation.
It would be hard to see how a Yahoo-Google partnership would help advertisers, as there would be no competition for ad space.
We welcome the Justice Department’s look into this.
Shares of Yahoo! closed Wednesday down 46 cents, or 1.6%, to $28.08.
Interesting article.
Lets see what will come out of the Antitrust case
Hmmmm, nice.
I should notify my friend about this.