Google Asks Advertisers to Stand Up for Yahoogle Deal

With little news about ongoing talks between Google and the U.S. Department of Justice regarding a proposed deal with Yahoo!, it seems the search giant is asking its advertisers to stand up for the deal.

TechCrunch received word from a reader called Darren who works with a company that spends a significant amount of money on AdWords. Darren said that one of Google’s attorneys contacted him about making a positive public statement about the Yahoogle deal.

“I received a voicemail from an attorney representing Google yesterday so of course I called back (voicemail attached). We spend about 100K a month on AdWords so we’d apparently been targeted because of that. He was looking for large advertisers who use both Google and Yahoo (we do) who would be willing to provide public testimonials in support of outsourcing Yahoo’s search ads to Google. I told him I’m a free-market competition kind of guy so he tried to address my concerns for about 15 minutes and then called it quits.”

The Yahoo/Google ad deal was, according to Google’s CEO, designed to meet government regulations. However, the deal has been on the table for months now and all the while the DOJ has been conducting it’s antitrust investigation. While competitors were worried the deal would create a monopoly, Google insisted the partnership would go ahead in October as planned. Now that the deal is no longer in the pipeline (pending talks with the DOJ), the competition is breathing a little easier. However, not all advertisers will be as diplomatic as Darren and if Google can get them to make enough of a racket, it might be enough to sway the DOJ.

For a recording of the voicemail from Google’s attorney, click through to TechCrunch.

(Via TechCrunch)