AT&T is expressing its opposition to a Yahoo-Google ad deal. Matthew Crowley, CMO of AT&T’s yellowpages.com subsidiary told a Senate antitrust panel Tuesday that Yahoo’s deal to start replacing some of its own search ads with those supplied by Google could drive up prices for online advertising. Yahoo’s is AT&T’s partner for Web services, reaching 14 million broadband customers and 70 million wireless customers, Crowley said. Meanwhile, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s senior VP-general counsel, warned that the deal could give Google about 90% of the search-engine ad business. Google and Yahoo officials said the 90% figure anticipates an actual merger between the two companies, when Yahoo still expects to sell most of its own search ads.
