I hate to bring in politics, but I wonder if it had something to do with this:

"COURT DOCUMENTS have revealed precisely what Google thinks of the Bush administration's demand that it hand over information on its punters' search results.

According to Siliconvalley.com, Google has called the Bush administration's request for data on Web searches 'so uninformed as to be nonsensical'"

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2006/02/20/googl...

Something similar happened to Qwest when it refused the Bush Admin's request for illegal wiretapping:

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/nsa-asked-for-p.htm...

You know you've made it as a corporation when other corporations with twice your market cap are pushing the government to file antitrust suits against you.

So the Bush admin basically drops an antitrust lawsuit Clinton had already won against Microsoft, yet it's going to go after Google?

Funny that I've never seen an ad for Walmart or P&G on Google. Pricing (at least for Adwords) is determined at auction so I'm guessing a Google/Yahoo deal will not have a great impact.

this just further proves, that GOOG is not an advertising company, as advertised.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8911340403810065276

This deal was mostly a lifeline to yahoo. If they didn't do it, the result would probably be worse for yahoo.