Forum Moderators: goodroi
...But the announcement on Thursday that it has struck a deal to assume some of the business of its nearest competitor, Yahoo, has aroused questions about whether the company is on its way to becoming a monopoly for advertising in the new medium.Yesterday, the heads of key subcommittees in the House and the Senate reiterated their intention to look into whether the Google-Yahoo arrangement would diminish competition.
Google Deal With Yahoo Raises Antitrust Questions [washingtonpost.com]
Google Deal With Yahoo Raises Antitrust Questions
Then I visited the linked resource. The first thing I see is this...
Google, already the world's dominant Web company, keeps on growing.
Antitrust? Snicker, snicker, snicker. And then as you read through the article, you see statements like this...
Google is the runaway leader in Internet search advertising in the United States; Yahoo is a distant second.
And...
"There is a lot at stake here," the source said. "If an advertiser wants to find an audience on the Internet, they have to go to Google."
^ It appears that Google has "already" secured that position, yes?
Our position has been clear since April that any deal between these two companies will increase prices for advertisers and start to consolidate more than 90 percent of the search advertising market in Google's hands.
What percentage of that does Google have now? 70%? 80%? Google owns the Internet.
Google is like an emperor now (we all make money for him) and you don't want to mess with him or you ask for troubles. Imagine that if you in the market that Big G thinking to enter then you're very much a dead meat.
Google is to big for you to even have a chance!
google is going to do to small businesses online what wal-mart did to them offline.
Google has no ability to abuse the monopoly so why should they be open to anti-trust investigations? Them owning 70% of search and advertising does not stop me from starting my own search engine so it does not impact competition.
google is going to do to small businesses online what wal-mart did to them offline.
How would they be able to do that? Why would they want to do it? Wal-mart actually sells goods, Google is just an advertiser. Why would Google have an interest in closing small businesses?
whether you love google, or not, this is bad because advertising costs are eventually going to go up for all, you watch.
ppc just happens to be a big arm of my marketing. i'm sure it is for many online small businesses as well. when prices to advertise via ppc go up, how are we to survive?
look, i'm not saying google wants to put small businesses out of business, but this will certainly happen as how can small business budgets compete with the larger companies?
my bottom line: tell me just ONE good thing for us ppc advertisers that will come of this yahoo/google partnership? I sure can't think of any.
[edited by: Tastatura at 7:09 pm (utc) on June 15, 2008]
whether you love google, or not, this is bad because advertising costs are eventually going to go up for all, you watch.
I think you are right. Google controlling everything could not be good.
I wonder, will Yahoo will be allow to display the Google's ads on their wonderful "search partners" network?
You would think that advertisers would get more eyeballs for their ads. Why would that be bad?
more eyeballs are good....paying more is bad.
over the past few years, my ROI has been increasing. PPC costs are at an all time high. this deal with yahoo/goog goes thru....i forsee ppc costs raising up to 50% within the next 1 to 3 years.
like i said, tell me one good thing this deal does for advertisers. let me rephase: how is this deal going to help our bottom line: ROI?
BTW: i think come august, the yahoo shareholders are going to boot the board, and go to on their knees to mircosoft and make a deal. a window is still open for that. clearly the street thinks this potential partnership is bad for yahoo...i mean, when is the last time google partnered with a company and their stock went down?!
I think you are right. Google controlling everything could not be good.
yeah, and appearently many other advertisers feel the same way:
The competition regulators are looking to see if they adversely affect competition.
I do not see how this would affect competition. Anyone could set up a search engine and an ad serving platform tomorrow and if they provide a good service then everyone would switch straight away. It is not like you are locked in or there are unnatural barriers to entry.
You would think that advertisers would get more eyeballs for their ads. Why would that be bad?
Its not about eyeballs, its about conversions. Yahoo has a different niche market and concept of browser than Google so advertising how you do on google doesn't convert on Yahoo. If they allow me to directly target yahoo through adwords then why go with Yahoo to begin with? (wouldn't they lose marketshare instantaniously?)
I do not see how this would affect competition. Anyone could set up a search engine and an ad serving platform tomorrow and if they provide a good service then everyone would switch straight away. It is not like you are locked in or there are unnatural barriers to entry.
False.. the day and age of whizbangery financial wheeling and deeling to make it so just isn't there. The bar is set SO high that you need a 10 billion dollar company to compete or even attempt to compete against google.
The day and age of "Searching 100 million pages" is gone. I can do that on a small cluster of PC's running nutch. Hell, i've attempted to do it on the billions of pages but people are so ingraned to google it didn't get any traffic or traction. (mostly because i couldn't offer them money like google does)
A federalized search where webmasters are compensated and allowed control over their corpus may be the next best thing in search, but another google will never happen.
False.. the day and age of whizbangery financial wheeling and deeling to make it so just isn't there. The bar is set SO high that you need a 10 billion dollar company to compete or even attempt to compete against google.
That is a natural barrier to entry, its nothing to do with anti-trust law. All you really need is a good idea, some prototype code that proves the idea. You will find it easy to get money to fund it.
A federalized search where webmasters are compensated and allowed control over their corpus may be the next best thing in search, but another google will never happen.
Formalise this idea, then draw up some POC code and then take it to Microsoft, I am sure they will give you as many billions as you like if it looks like it might kill Google. Google is not another Yahoo or Altavista but that does not mean it is not better than them.
State attorneys general might also be tempted to look into the arrangement, said a source close to Microsoft's thinking.
Yes, they might be tempted.
Whether or not this is an anti-trust issue will be relevant to Yahoo's continued desire to compete in the search-marketing industry. The article implies that Google will only be taking over part of Yahoo's search marketing, but begs the question "How much?"
I agree that the immediate financial boost could certainly strengthen Yahoo!, but if they fall out of the market entirely, you can call it YaGoo!
Still, I don't think Yahoo has given up yet. I'm guessing their going to invest the money they make into their community and attempt to solidify their search-base that way; they've seemed sort of leaky. What's their search market (not marketing) share? 25%? Once they take care of that, though, I think we'll see a significant investment into Yahoo! Search Marketing and a termination of the Google deal.
I'm just waiting for Google to create The Singularity. Come ooon December 21st, 2012 baby! Daddy needs a new pair of shoes!
