Is the Great Google/Yahoo/MSN war going to hit publishers?

Overture Uk took the first step to reject advertisers that carry Adsense

[Imaster]

Just heard news that Overture UK refused advertisers that carried Google Adsense on their sites. In future, same could happen in case of publishers/advertisers who carry either Google Adsense or the upcoming Overture Content match on their sites.

Read threads:
Overture vs Google [webmasterworld.com]

Overture Uk Hits Back [webmasterworld.com]

- MSN/Yahoo could penalize sites that carry Adsense
- Google/MSN could penalize sites that carry Overture Content Match.
- ....

Perhaps different forms of penalty could be involved. Unless of course, these search engines mutually agree not to involve any publishers/advertisers in their war.

In the Search Engines war, the publishers/advertisers could have a bad time ahead. More bad time for publishers.

Any thoughts?

[grnidone]

The whole thing doesn't make any sense.

As long as Overture gets paid, why would it matter if a site also has Adsense running?

It seems to me they will be hurt by this move.

But then, PPC is a much bigger game in the UK and Europe, so maybe I'm not seeing the full picture from this side of the Atlantic.

<added>Besides, people will just develop feeder sites to use with Overture to get around the issue.

[glengara]

I can well understand some argy-bargy over Adsense/Contentmatch, a bit more ominous is the part ".. or search engine optimisers (SEOs) who promote Google over other search engines."