Yahoo And Google Revise Deal To Try To Win Antitrust Approval

from the bargaining dept

With Yahoo and Google in the midst of a vast negotiation with the Justice Department to try to avoid an antitrust lawsuit over their proposed ad deal -- even to the point of Google threatening to back out entirely -- it shouldn't come as a surprise that they're going to propose various modifications to the deal.

The news today is leaking that the two companies are proposing a greatly scaled back version of the deal to see if it passes Justice Department muster. In this case, the deal would be shortened from 10 years to just two, and would limit how much revenue it could represent to Yahoo while also allowing any advertiser to opt out of the deal. We're still waiting for a clear explanation of how this deal will actually negatively impact consumers, but some people still insist it will. For those who believe so, let's ask a simple question: how is this any worse than Yahoo disappearing from the marketplace? Because if the company doesn't do something soon that may be what we're looking at.

Filed Under: antitrust
Companies: google, justice department, yahoo

Google And Yahoo May End Deal; Not Worth An Antitrust Lawsuit

from the ouch-for-yahoo dept

With various politicians pushing the Justice Department to slam Google on antitrust charges (it's worth noting, of course, that Rep. Joe Barton, who seems to be leading the anti-Google charge, just so happens to have received an awful lot of campaign money from AT&T -- Google's arch nemesis), it appears that Google and Yahoo's attempt to broker a deal with the Justice Department may be falling through.

Reports are coming out that the two companies are ready to announce that they're walking away from their planned deal. This actually represents a bad end result for almost everyone involved. Yahoo will be hurt the most by this, and the last thing Yahoo needs right now is more trouble. For Google it's a loss, but not a huge loss. Microsoft comes out of it happy (and will gleefully watch Yahoo's stock continue to slide). It's still unclear what actual harm it would do to the marketplace to have Google running ads on Yahoo, but since when is politics about reason?

Filed Under: advertising, antitrust, deals
Companies: google, justice department, yahoo

Internet Companies Pay Lip Service To Human Rights

from the actions-speak-louder-than-words dept

After all the controversy, and threats of Congressional action, over actions by companies like Yahoo and Google to appease foreign governments against what many consider basic human rights issues, various internet companies have agreed on a set of "guidelines" for how they deal with human rights issues. While it's nice that they're actually thinking about these issues, the guidelines on the whole are pretty weak and don't bind the companies to do anything. Basically, it just says that the companies will consider the human rights issues in their decision making. If anything, this seems like an attempt to just keep the government from legislating on the issues, and it may not be very successful on that front. The real test will be in seeing how these companies actually act, rather than what sorts of guidelines they've signed.

Filed Under: actions, china, human rights, internet companies, words
Companies: google, yahoo

Search Engine Cache Isn't Copyright Infringement

from the good-news-for-search-engines dept

There are some out there who have suggested that search engines such as Google and Yahoo are basically just massive copyright violators, because they scan, index and keep an archive of websites. That copied archive (usually called a cache) is, according to these commenters, an unauthorized copy. Now a court has basically destroyed that argument, noting that putting content online is giving an implicit license for search engines to index and copy. The lawsuit also claimed that individuals who visited the cached version were also infringers -- but the court also rejected that argument, claiming that the implied license extends to those users. The only part of the case that seems to be moving forward is whether or not this implicit license was broken after the lawsuit started and search engines still didn't take down the content. The idea there was that any explicit notification by the content holder might override the implicit license -- and thus search engines should have taken down the content as soon as the lawsuit started (thus signaling an explicit revoke of the license). Of course, the whole thing seems pretty silly. If the guy didn't want his content indexed, he should learn what a robots.txt file is for.

Filed Under: cache, copyright, search engine
Companies: google, microsoft, yahoo

American Airlines Cuts & Pastes Its Keyword Ad Lawsuit; Tries Again With Yahoo

from the search-and-replace dept

Last year, we were surprised to see American Airlines sue Google over the fact that competitors were buying keyword-based ads on American Airlines' trademarks. Plenty of similar lawsuits had been brought, but for the most part (in the US at least), search engines are on the right side of the law. First of all, simply buying keywords based on trademarks isn't considered a violation of the trademark. Trademark law doesn't give you total control over the mark, but it is designed to prevent confusing uses. Advertising against a competitor isn't a confusing use by itself, so long as it's clear that the advertiser is different from the trademark holder. Second, and more importantly, even if it was a violation of trademark, the liability should fall on the advertiser, not the search engine. Since the search engine is just a platform, the real claim should be against whoever created and paid for the advertisement.

Given that the search engines have come out on top in many such cases, we were surprised this past summer to see Google and American Airlines settle the case, while keeping the actual details secret. Initially, it appeared that Google had won the settlement, as it was still possible to find those competing ads. However, it's possible that the terms of the settlement hadn't taken effect yet, as a more recent search no longer finds those ads. Even more damning is the news that American Airlines has now basically done a copy & paste and search & replace on the original lawsuit and re-filed it against Yahoo. It even includes the same mistakes as the first lawsuit. As Eric Goldman notes, this is strange for a variety of reasons, including the fact that Yahoo is known to be much more friendly to trademark holders in such cases. However, this certainly suggests that Google may have caved in its settlement, rather than the other way around. If so, that would have been an unfortunate decision by Google, and Google's settlement may only lead to more trademark holders taking their chances on suing as well.

Filed Under: search ads, trademark
Companies: american airlines, google, yahoo

Google And Yahoo Negotiating With Justice Department Over Antitrust

from the trying-to-avoid-a-lawsuit dept

With the Justice Department making it clear that it wanted to go after Google for possible antitrust violations, it appears that Google has recognized the time isn't right to be defiant, but to get a seat at the negotiating table. The company, along with Yahoo, is apparently in talks with the Justice Department to see what it can do to avoid getting sued for antitrust violations. While it's obviously way too early to see whether or not this works, it must be better than waiting until the whole thing gets hashed out in court. It's still difficult to see what sort of antitrust violation there really is here, but that wouldn't stop the government from bringing a costly lawsuit if some sort of deal isn't worked out quickly.

Filed Under: antitrust, negotiating
Companies: google, yahoo

Surprise, Surprise: WalMart Changes Its Mind, Keeps DRM Servers Running (For Now)

from the and-again dept

A couple weeks back, we noted with surprise Wal-Mart's decision to turn off its DRM servers with little warning. After all, both Yahoo and Microsoft had tried to do the same thing, but eventually backed down in front of rather public backlash from customers. It's hard to believe that no one in charge of Wal-Mart's music offering was aware of that. But, still, the company tried to shut down the DRM servers. And, surprise, surprise, there was widespread backlash. So, not surprisingly, Wal-Mart has backed down and promised to keep the DRM servers running for the time being.

Filed Under: drm, servers
Companies: microsoft, wal-mart, yahoo

If The Google-Yahoo Deal Is Bad For Advertisers Or Publishers, Isn't That Just An Opportunity?

from the what's-the-problem? dept

I recognize that in times of financial crisis, it may seem more difficult than ever to imagine unique and innovative opportunities cropping up -- but it's often in such times that the most innovative businesses are formed. How quickly we forget, for instance, that Google's own business model was formed during the barren years following the last dot com bubble burst. Yet, for some reason, people seem to think that today's offerings are the be-all and end-all of innovation. That's why we get these articles worrying about how a Google-Yahoo ad deal will be bad for advertisers and publishers. Yet, there's little evidence to actually support that. The article linked above cites the easily disproved anecdote from the NY Times last month about one guy who had a spammy site that Google punished. That was the guy's own fault, not Google's.

But, really, the most important point ignored in most of these discussions is that if Google really does make ad prices higher and share less with its AdSense publisher partners, that would create a huge opportunity for others, whether large incumbents or small startups, to step into that breach. If I had to bet, I'd say that there are already companies working on solutions that are more interesting and more valuable than Google's advertising plays. There are companies who are recognizing that "advertising" is not necessarily the best model, and they're working on better solutions that won't even seem like advertising at all -- but will start to take advertising dollars away from traditional ad companies. Just as Microsoft couldn't see the threat of Google for many years, Google won't even notice these companies on its radar, and while everyone's fretting a Google "monopoly" in search ads, the next revolution will be bubbling up somewhere else entirely.

Filed Under: advertising, antitrust, monopolies, search
Companies: google, yahoo

Reason #9,358 For Not Buying DRM'd Music: Wal-Mart Shuts Down DRM Servers

from the and-again dept

Following the misguided lead of both Microsoft and Yahoo, it appears that Wal-Mart has decided to turn off its DRM servers, basically screwing over anyone who trusted Wal-Mart to make sure that music bought from Wal-Mart would keep working. What's amazing is that Wal-Mart would do this after seeing the backlash that made both Microsoft and Yahoo eventually back down (with Yahoo even going so far as to offer refunds). Wal-Mart, on the other hand, just told people they have a week to burn their music to a CD and re-rip it -- or they lose it entirely. Obviously, by this point, you should know that buying DRM'd music is a mistake, because you're leaving the music in a situation where the company you bought it from can "turn it off" at some point, but what's more amazing is that Wal-Mart would make the exact same mistake after seeing what happened to both Yahoo and Microsoft.

Filed Under: drm, servers
Companies: microsoft, wal-mart, yahoo

Will A Google/Yahoo Ad Deal Really Impact Ad Prices?

from the not-so-clear dept

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has sent a letter to the Justice Department opposing Yahoo's plan to hand much of its search advertising over to Google. We've already explained some reasons why this combination shouldn't set off antitrust alarms, but the reasons given by the ANA don't make much sense. It claims that the deal would basically mean that one company would control 90% of the market, which would lead to increased prices for advertisers. However, that doesn't necessarily seem true to follow -- because Google doesn't set prices for ads. Google's ad system is, famously, an auction system where the prices are set by the market. So it's difficult to see why the inclusion of Yahoo's ad inventory would significantly raise the prices -- unless the argument is that the market is artificially depressed right now, and this would just raise it to the proper levels. However, apparently, that might not matter much, as reports are coming out that the Justice Department has already hired a big time antitrust lawyer to use against Google. This is increasingly looking like a political attack on a company that is "big" rather than looking to see if its success actually harms or helps consumers.

Filed Under: advertising, antitrust, auctions, justice department, monopolies, prices, search marketing
Companies: google, yahoo