Japan gives thumbs up to Yahoo and Google tie-up

THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN has approved an agreement between Yahoo Japan and Google.

The country's anti-trust watchdog has snuffled around the deal and says that as it stands at the moment it is okay as long as the two companies continue to be separate and offer distinctive services. However it has warned it will keep checking for possible future anti-trust violations.

Yahoo Japan wants to launch a search service using Google's search and advertising technology in Japan by the end of this year.

In the rest of the world, Yahoo is happy to use Microsoft's Bing search engine. But that might have been because deals between Google and Yahoo were being frowned upon by Western anti-trust regulators.

According to the Associated Press, the online shopping site Rakuten had asked the Japanese Fair Trade Commission to look into the deal, which was announced in July, to see if the partnership might hinder competition and growth in the Japanese Internet marketplace. µ