Search Giant Google is apparently doing a little searching of its own – for support of it’s proposed advertising deal with Yahoo that is. TechCrunch tells about one of their readers (who advertises with both Google and Yahoo) getting a call from a lawyer representing Google and asking them to provide a public testimonial as to why they think the Google-Yahoo deal would be a good idea.
The reader is a guy named Darrin from ReverseMortgageGuides.org. TechCrunch quotes him:
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.
People will call Google evil for this and criticize the move, but I can’t say I really blame the company for trying to get as much ammo as possible. They’ve got a lot invested into this deal and advertisers speaking in favor of it would be some welcome firepower for them in their battle with the Justice Department (and all who oppose the deal). Google has been working very hard lately to convince people that the deal’s legit.
Reverse Mortgage Guides allegedly spends $100,000 a month on AdWords campaigns and also advertises with Yahoo, so it’s clear that Google’s trying to get the big spenders who use both services. I would expect to hear more similar stories pop up in the near future. I just wonder how many of the advertisers Google’s lawyers contact will actually provide the favorable testimony that Google is going after. I also wonder if Yahoo has people working on this tactic.
