According to the Washington Post, the Google and Yahoo! Non-Exclusive Advertising Agreement is taking on a lot of heat from the anti-trust officials and the Department of Justice. Their main concern being, that this deal might catapult Google into becoming a monopoly in the field of search marketing.

Heads of key subcommittees in the House and the Senate repeatedly raised their concerns about whether the Google-Yahoo! deal would diminish competition. As per the Google-Yahoo! deal, Google would provide the ads for an undisclosed portion of Yahoo's search queries in the United States and Canada.

Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.), chairman of the Commerce subcommittee on commerce, trade and consumer protection and said in a statement, "The deal "is yet another example of the rapid changes in this market, and further underscores the need for close scrutiny,"

Kent Walker (Google, General Counsel), "Our sense is that by the end of the review, they'll be comfortable with the process. We do feel that it is a pro-competitive deal."

Microsoft was also not far behind in giving its opinion and stated, "Our position has been clear since April that any deal between these two companies will increase prices for advertisers and start to consolidate more than 90 percent of the search advertising market in Google's hands. Legal and industry experts agree that this would clearly make the market less competitive."

Also at the Webmaster World, there are numerous posts about the anti-trust questions raised on the Google-Yahoo! Deal. Here are a few excerpts from that thread:

"whether you love google, or not…I think them getting yahoo! is bad for everyone in the long run. i don't want, or trust them controlling my advertising costs in any way, shape, or form….nor could i understand anyone else wanting 1 company with this much power.
and the article so said that goog or yahoo doesn't "set the prices, its done by auction." that's a lie. yahoo just recently implimented "minimum bids" which sets the prices for certain keywords. and we all know about the google $10 minimum bid…
this deal clearly restricts competition, and is bad for everyone involved in Internet marketing."

How would they be able to do that? Why would they want to do it? Wal-mart actually sells goods, Google is just an advertiser. Why would Google have an interest in closing small businesses?"

On the other hand, to avoid such hurdles as anti-trust issues Google and Yahoo! lawyers are already in talk with the Department of Justice officials.

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