At this point, it just seems mean spirited to start attacking Google and Yahoo's beleagured search deal, but a top congressman on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a consumer advocacy group have come out against the deal.
Yesterday, Texas Republican Joe Barton expressed frustration at Google and Yahoo's responses to questions about their potential search deal in a letter that recommended the Justice Department "thoroughly investigate" their search partnership. Also, a consumer group called U.S. Public Interest Group sent a letter last week to the U.S. Attorney General saying that the partnership would negatively effect consumer privacy.
The non-exclusive deal has been held up by a Justice investigation since June. The proposed plan would allow Google to serve search ads alongside underperforming Yahoo key words, but has been mired in monopoly accusations, as Google and Yahoo are the top two search advertising sellers. Google and Yahoo originally thought the DoJ investigation would be completed in early October, but as the month comes to a close, a settlement that will be beneficial to the business interests of either company is looking increasingly unlikely.
In his letter, Barton said that many of the company's answers to questions asked by his staff "seemed designed to obscure rather than clarify how the Google-Yahoo partnership would work." Barton also claimed that Yahoo has resisted his efforts to obtain an unredacted copy of a document that suggests some of Yahoo's employees are concerned that working with Google would result in an "effective monopoly."
U.S. PIRG's argument is a bit more of a stretch. They claim that competitors will be forced to collect more information on Internet users after the deal because they would not be able to compete with the market leaders: "The proposed agreement induces the remaining paid search advertising outlets to resort to privacy invasive techniques which harms consumer privacy online and thus threatens online discourse in general."
Considering that Google is already pounding other companies in the search field (with about 70 percent market share), this accusation leaves one question unanswered. If Google's search competitors could compete better by invading user privacy a bit more, wouldn't they have tried that already?
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