European competition regulators have announced a review into the Google and Yahoo! online search advertising deal, leading the two companies to suspend the partnership.
Google and Yahoo! today said that they would temporarily suspend the partnership until both US (see
US Regulators Investigate Yahoo!/Google Deal) and EU regulators have examined the deal.
The partnership would allow Google to sell advertising on Yahoo! in return for a share of the profits.
If it goes ahead, the two companies will control more than 80% of the online advertising market.
The deal, valued by Yahoo! at $800 million a year, was announced shortly after the company rejected Microsoft’s $47.5 billion takeover bid.
Yesterday, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) voiced its opposition to the proposed alliance.
In a statement, the group said: “The reality is that a large portion of the traffic to most online newspapers’ websites today comes through paid search or natural results on search engines.
“For this reason, competition among search engines is absolutely vital for newspapers – to ensure that no search engine can set monopoly prices for paid search ads, and to prevent any search engine from influencing users’ surfing habits by manipulating unpaid search results.”
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