Yahoo wins confidentiality order for Google ad deal
Yahoo said Friday that the Securities and Exchange Commission has granted it a confidentiality order to keep certain parts of its Google ad deal out of the public eye.
In its quarterly filing with the SEC Aug. 8, Yahoo redacted multiple details about its search advertising deal with Google. Simply put, it was a festival of asterisks that looked like this:
In a filing Friday, Yahoo disclosed that the SEC said what the company omitted "qualifies as confidential commercial or financial information under the Freedom of Information Act, the Division of Corporation Finance has determined not to publicly disclose it. Accordingly, excluded information from the following exhibit(s) will not be released to the public for the time period(s) specified: Exhibit 10.19 through June 12, 2012."
But seeing how the SEC made its decision "based on representations by Yahoo! Inc. that this information qualifies as confidential," I can't help but wonder if the SEC would reconsider its decision if someone challenged it, say in a Freedom of Information Act request.
The information Yahoo didn't disclose is now only more interesting to me.