An online advertising partnership between Yahoo Inc and Google Inc is facing opposition from consumer and civic groups that did not wait for an official deal announcement to voice their discontent.
Top Google executives said on Thursday they are interested in a partnership with their closest rival but didn’t indicate how close they were to an agreement.
A coalition of 16 civil rights and rural advocacy groups, including the Black Leadership Forum and the League of Rural Voters, on Friday urged federal regulators to investigate the potential combination.
The Black Leadership Forum is an umbrella group of 36 civil rights organizations, including the NAACP and the National Urban League.
LETTER
The groups argued in a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, that the deal would give Google almost 90 percent of the search advertising market and strengthen its influence over Internet users’ access to information.
Separately, the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), a consumer advocacy group, said it will push US regulators to block any deal and is already urging European consumer groups to raise concerns with EU officials. The EU generally takes a tougher approach on antitrust, fining Microsoft Corp US$1.39 billion for anticompetitive conduct earlier this year.
“You can’t allow Google to operate a portion of its leading competitor out of its back pocket,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of CDD.
MORE HURDLES
While previous attempts to block deals by both the CDD and civil rights organizations have proved unsuccessful, their opposition won’t be the only hurdle to a Google-Yahoo partnership.
The Justice Department has already made inquiries about an ad partnership test the two had for two weeks last month. And, Senator Herb Kohl, who chairs a subcommittee overseeing antitrust issues, said last month he would closely scrutinize any permanent deal.
Spokespeople from Yahoo and Google declined to comment on the groups’ letter. But Google executives said on Thursday they would seek to address regulators’ objections.
“If there were a deal [with Yahoo], we would anticipate structuring the deal to address the antitrust concerns that have been widely discussed,” said Google chairman Eric Schmidt.
Although Schmidt wouldn’t detail such a structure, analysts have speculated that it would operate the partnership as an auction-style system that would allow other rivals, including Microsoft, to show ads on Yahoo.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS