Those who have been watching closely while Google and Yahoo iron out some kinks in their search ad deal would be glad to know that the two search engines have partially disclosed some information about it. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Google and Yahoo have made publicly available the contract governing their advertising agreement, although leaving out some more important details such as financial terms and how the two companies will split revenues they would earn from the deal.
It might be an unusual move from Google and Yahoo, but if you’re the the two search engines who are about to combine forces, with a projected combined search market share of around 90% and analysts and critics are watching you’re every move, I guess the next best thing to do is feed them what they need/want.
So, what are these details that were disclosed as reported by Reuters? Actually, there were nothing that we don’t already know of. We already know that the deal is a “non-exclusive” partnership between the two and that Yahoo is still free walk-out anytime and that it was meant to let Yahoo to work out things with its other business.
But no matter how both Google and Yahoo would want to term their deal as “non-exclusive”, the filing pointed out an interesting phrase that says “other business opportunities”. What exactly these other business opportunities are what remained a big mystery. And the more this mystery is not disclose the more controversial this deal would be.
One thing is clear though that the filing revealed was of course something to do with the “collaborative” effort between the the companies’ Instant Messaging product – YM and GTalk. Other than those, we live it up to you to decipher what ever that you can take from the filing which you can read from here.
