ACCC greenlights Microsoft/Yahoo deal

in brief The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has announced that it will not oppose the agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo to combine their search and search advertising businesses.

After 40 days of review, the Commission decided that "in combining search engine platforms, Microsoft and Yahoo! may have been able to achieve the necessary scale to provide effective and sustainable competition to Google".

The Commission also said that the agreement would not lessen innovation incentives for either Microsoft, Yahoo or Google.

Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft would gain an exclusive 10-year licence to Yahoo's search technologies to integrate into Redmond's Bing search engine. Yahoo would also become the exclusive worldwide sales force for both company's premium search advertisers.