The Associated Press is reporting that even before an online advertising partnership between Yahoo! and Google is even announced (and some believe it never will be), consumer and civic groups are lining up in opposition. 16 civil rights and rural advocacy groups, including the Black Leadership Forum, an alliance of over 36 African American civil rights groups, and the League of Rural Voters whose stated goal is to to help turn up the volume on rural issues for the media and our elected officials urged federal regulators to investigate the potential linkup.
The groups are concerned that if Google sells ads for Yahoo’s search site, then it will control almost 90% of the ads in the “search advertising market,” and thereby “strengthen its influence over Internet users’ access to information.” It doesn’t say how such access would be controlled or limited, and Yahoo has not announced any plans to use Google’s search engine, only its AdWords. According to the AP, The Center for Digital Democracy has already announced its opposition to any such deal, and also intends to raise the issue with officials of the European Union; this is not at all apparent from their Digital Destiny website, where they say, “We have not read the letter to the DoJ. Nor do we know of any financial or other relationship between the Forum and any of the many interests who are fighting Google (phone and cable companies, for example, are opposed to Google’s positions on network neutrality). But we believe that all financial relationships, even from the recent past, need to be identified. I know this is Washington, where too many people “lease out,” as we say around my office. But there are important issues at stake with the new media marketplace. Reporters will need to do more to identify whether there are financial and other relationships with groups from Google, Microsoft, phone and cable, etc.” Still, they believe that “the real focus should be to examine the state of competition in the online ad market–and what it means for the future of communications in the digital democratic era,” whatever that means.
While we did report earlier on a two-week experiment involving the sale of ads for 3% of Yahoo’s searches by Google, but it is not clear, now that the Microsoft tender offer has been beaten back, if either side is interested in continuing the relationship.
Obviously, as Google grows larger and more successful, its stated goal of “do no evil” notwithstanding, it becomes a larger and larger target for groups seeking a cause, or publicity. As they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Filed under: AdWords, Google, Microsoft, Search, Yahoo Tagged: | Black Leadership Forum, Google, League of Rural Voters, Microsoft, Search, The Center for Digital Democracy, Yahoo
