Microsoft’s abandoned takeover bid for Yahoo appears to have culminated with a disheartening thud for those two companies but amounted to yet another coup for online search leader Google.
What began in January as Microsoft’s most audacious attack yet on Google instead paved the way for the Internet’s most powerful company to gain even more clout through a deal that gives Google access to a large chunk of Yahoo’s advertising space.
By submitting to a partnership that endorses Google’s search advertising technology as a better choice than its own, Yahoo is giving online marketers even more incentive to spend most of their money with its biggest rival, according to industry analysts.
It looks like such a sweet deal for Google that the U.S. Justice Department and lawmakers are expected to take a hard look at the arrangement to make sure it doesn’t give Google too much control over the Internet’s search advertising market.
Google currently has about 75 percent of the U.S. search advertising market followed by Yahoo at 9 percent, according to the research firm eMarketer…
