Microhoo not down and out down under
The antitrust wizards of Oz and their counterparts in Canada have just added another brick to Microsoft and Yahoo's yellow brick road of co-advertising, by clearing the firms to proceed with the deal.
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission gave the deal its blessing on Tuesday, announcing the deal seemed kosher because "Microsoft and Yahoo!'s share of online paid search advertising queries in Australia was limited."
"In combining search engine platforms, Microsoft and Yahoo! may have been able to achieve the necessary scale to provide effective and sustainable competition to Google, which had a very large share of online paid search advertising queries," the statement added.
Canada also said it had no objections with the deal moving forward, which may help sway US antitrust regulators at the department of justice (DOJ), who have been scrutinising the deal.
Yahoo and Microsoft have long been talking about pooling their search efforts, in a bid to compete more seriously with Google, which holds around 65 per cent of the search market. Together, Micro-hoo should grab another 30 per cent of the search pie.
In a joint statement, Microsoft and Google said they continued "to believe that this deal will create a true, competitive alternative in the marketplace that will benefit consumers, advertisers and publishers." The pair added they hoped the deal would be finalised in early 2010.
