The World Association of Newspapers has today asked competition authorities in Europe and North America to block an advertising agreement between Google and Yahoo on anti-competitive grounds. WAN argues that the deal would have a negative impact on the advertising revenues that the search giants provide to newspaper and other websites, and on the cost of paid search advertising.
In its communiqué opposing the deal, WAN offers a lengthy analysis of the threat to newspapers through a loss of revenue caused by reduced competition. It concludes that the deal would weaken "the viability and economic independence of the world's newspapers", adding: "We must speak out now and urge regulators to block this anti-competitive deal."
WAN has called on the antitrust division of the US department of justice, the European Commission's competition directorate and the competition bureau of Canada to examine the impact of the agreement and to block the deal. In a letter to the three agencies, WAN's president, Gavin O'Reilly, said:
"The competition that currently exists between Google and Yahoo is absolutely essential to ensuring that our member titles receive competitive returns for online advertising on their sites, and for obtaining competitive prices when they purchase paid search advertising."
The Paris-based WAN represents 18,000 newspapers across in 102 countries. It has played a key role in developing the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP), which would allow on-line content providers more control over how the search engines access and exploit their content. Full details of the project can be found here.
To see a counter argument to demanding greater regulation on Google, see Jeff Jarvis's challenging column today.
