Google, Yahoo cave a bit to save ad deal

Yahoo and Google will cap the amount of revenue an ad deal can generate in an attempt to win over the Department of Justice.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google and Yahoo have added "a number of new provisions designed to limit the scope" of the deal.

The biggest concession is that the deal will become a two-year pact instead of 10 years. The other change is that the revenue Yahoo can garner from Google is capped at 25 percent of its search revenue. Google advertisers can also opt out of seeing their ads on Yahoo.

Will this win approval? Possibly. But the larger issue is whether this ad deal with these concessions is really worth the effort. Maybe all sides are trying to back away gracefully.

More reading:

• Mission accomplished: Google’s ad deal with Yahoo has already worked
• Yahoo: What happens if Google deal doesn’t go through?