• Ad Age, Thursday, May 8, 2008 11:15 AM

Ad Age talks to advertisers who express their disappointment that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal never came through. Why, because they think a stronger challenge to Google would have been healthier for the business. "We're all a bit disappointed really," said Laura McFarlane, managing partner-chief strategy officer at WPP's Beyond Interaction. "It's the search piece that concerns us."

Adam Kasper, senior VP-director of digital media at Havas' MediaContacts, said he's not usually a big fan of mergers like this, but this one was an exception. "It's all about Google," he added, not some magic advertising platform born out of a Microsoft-Yahoo union. Microhoo would have helped keep Google honest.

Back to that "search piece": McFarlane and others certainly aren't happy about a potential Google-Yahoo search deal, because, well-nobody likes to buy from a monopoly, which is effectively what Google would have. "I hope they don't do it," said Curt Hecht, exec VP-chief digital officer at GM Planworks and Starcom MediaVest Group. "One, because of competition, but also because of the way search works, because it's a global channel and because of the way it scales. It's very important to the future."

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