Google has decided to abandon its advertising partnership with Yahoo to avoid having a “protracted legal battle” with regulators.The deal, which was featured in last month’s SEO newsletter, involved Google providing some of the advertising around Yahoo’s search results and would have been worth $800m (£494m) a year to Yahoo.

It was originally announced in June but has faced anti-trust objections.

Yahoo said in a statement it was disappointed that Google had decided not to fight for the deal in court. However, Google said it would not allow the prospect of a legal battle to distract it from its core mission.

Now that the Google deal has fallen through, Yahoo may find itself having to try to do another deal with Microsoft, although Microsoft has publicly said it is no longer interested.

(Source: BBC Technology News, 5/11/2008)