US anti-monopoly investigators have asked Microsoft and Yahoo
for more details of their proposed onlinesearch partnershipto challenge market leader
Google.
Neither company has revealed the nature of the request, but
observers said it is likely to be around the impact the deal will
have on the pricing of online advertising.
Advertisers are hoping that a stronger competitor to Google will
accelerate the fall in prices for search terms initiated by the
downturn.
The request for more information marks a deepening of the
investigation, but Yahoo said it did not expect closure of the deal
to be delayed, according to the
Financial Times.
Both Microsoft and Yahoo anticipated a lengthy review and said
from the start that they did not expect the deal to close before
the end of the year.
Although the deal is likely to be approved, US authorities did
block
Heinz from acquiring Beech-Nut to take on market leader
Gerber.
This means Microsoft may have to put up a fight, as Oracle did
to acquire PeopleSoft to boost competition with SAP.
European anti-monopoly authorities are not reviewing the
proposed deal because Microsoft and Yahoo would have a combined
share of only 10% of the European search advertising market.