Archive notice: This article was originally published on June 16, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Search engine operators Google and Yahoo have announced a joint advertising partnership. Under the arrangement, Yahoo will allow AdSense advertisements sold by Google on some of its websites in the United States and Canada. The agreement is initially set to run for four years and may be extended twice for three years each time. The cooperation could bring Yahoo around $800 million annually (approximately €517 million), the Sunnyvale-based company said. However, the move would have no impact on Yahoo’s own search and advertising services, which would continue as usual. Alongside their advertising cooperation, the two Internet companies also announced that they intend to improve interoperability between their respective instant messaging services in order to enhance communication options for their customers.
“This commercial agreement allows Yahoo to send its advertising messages to users in a customized form and provides advertisers and publishers with better advertising technology,” explains Google CEO Eric Schmidt. In this way, Yahoo could significantly improve its prospects for commercial success. “The cooperation is also an important step toward preserving competition and the dynamic structure of the online advertising sector,” Schmidt adds. “We are proud of the advertising technologies we have developed, which provide users with individually relevant advertisements. The current agreement will make these benefits available to Yahoo and its large customer base as well,” Omid Kordestani, Google’s Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Business Development, wrote on the company’s official blog.
“The Internet is a cooperative business. We have similar agreements to the one with Yahoo with other search engine operators such as AOL,” Kay Oberbeck, spokesperson for Google Northern Europe, told pressetext.de. The benefits of the newly concluded agreement are varied. “Yahoo users now have the opportunity to participate in our advertising system. For advertisers, this means they will be able to target and send their advertising messages more precisely to their audience in the future,” Oberbeck emphasizes. In principle, however, Yahoo is entirely free to decide how it uses Google’s technology. “The cooperation is based on a non-exclusive agreement; Yahoo’s partnerships with other providers in the search advertising business are not excluded,” Oberbeck clarifies.
The effects of the current agreement initially apply only to websites in the United States and Canada. According to the Google spokesperson, there are currently no plans for other countries. Antitrust concerns arising from the Google-Yahoo partnership are not expected. Nevertheless, as a safeguard, the companies voluntarily granted the US Department of Justice a three-and-a-half-month review period before the agreement takes effect. “As a non-exclusive and purely commercial agreement, we see no need for antitrust intervention,” Oberbeck concludes.
