LMAO - good to see the eurocrats still have no idea...

They are spineless - yet another example of fat wages for a useless quasi-ruling 'body'

That is because Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL provided ''credible'' alternatives for placing ads on Web sites."

Yes right. I spend a four-digit amount in EUR every month on Google Adwords. I have the same ads running on Yahoo and every month I get an email that I have not reached the minimum 25 EUR turnover. Yahoos and Microsofts market shares are so small in Germany you need a microscope to measure it.

So much for the Internet being independent.

yahoo is improving a lot as long as the American market is concerned .....but Europe is a totally different scenario

The question they are looking at is will the takeover affect competition or the ability for others to compete.

The answer is no because if Yahoo or MS brought out an amazing new search engine and provided better referrals at a lower cost whilst providing the advertiser with more revenue then you could switch within 1 day.

Also there is nothing which prevents a new competitor entering the market (because the cost of switching is so low), all they have to do is build a better mouse trap and they will have marketshare overnight.

People often confuse the goal of monopoly law - it is not there to prevent companies having close to 100% marketshare, they want to make sure that any monopoly cannot affect fair trade.

Excellent now lets see some of that nice blue chip inventory getting combined into adsense rich media.

Microsoft probably stopped lobbying against it when they decided to buy Yahoo! so it got approved much more easily.

But this is the EU, decisions are not made based on which side 'lobbies' the most.