Google Kills Yahoo Ad Deal
mytrip writes "Google has pulled the plug on on a search-ad partnership with Yahoo that would have given Yahoo major new revenue but that raised antitrust concerns. 'After four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement,' said David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer in a blog post Wednesday."
I'm not a huge Google booster, you won't see much more than spamtrap stuff in any of my Gmail accounts; but I don't really understand why this deal is seen as so serious. Yahoo has a fairly strong set of web properties, but mediocre advertising and search. Running Google ads sure isn't a long term vote of confidence in their own ad department; but Yahoo's ad space is quite valuable, and presumably they believe that they can do better as a site operator selling ad space. I'm not sure whether they are right or not; but it is at least plausible.
Am I missing something about this, or did the deal get shot down by some sort of outside pressure? (Is MS still involved in some corporate version of "It's complicated" here?)