At the desire of the World organization of Newspapers (WAN), an worldly organization for the newspaper industry, the European Commission’s Competition Directorate has launched an inquiry into a proposed online advertising relationship within Google and Yahoo.

In June, the two Web giants announced that advertisements from Google’s AdSense program would seem on Yahoo sites alongside Yahoo’s own advertisements. The U.S. Justice office is already reviewing the proposed arrangement to see whether it violates antitrust laws. According to most estimates,

Google and Yahoo will control as much as 80 percent of the North American online advertising market when the deal goes into effect in October.

Gavin O’Reilly, president of WAN, said in a letter to the head of the Competition Directorate that the arrangement would give Google too much control by online advertising prices.

“In our view,” O’Reilly said, “the proposed advertising deal within Google and Yahoo would seriously weaken [advertising rate] […]

Orginal post by dhiram