When Yahoo Japan and Google announced their partnership for web searches and PPC advertising, many expressed concerns. Rakuten was one of the organizations, who publicly accused that the partnership was a violation of the antitrust law. A year after the announcement, and 6 months after Yahoo Japan adopting Google’s technologies, Rakuten switched the team, and joined Google by adopting Google’s search technology and AdSence services.

As one of the main reasons why Rakuten has come to this decision, they said, “Now that Yahoo Japan is using Google’s search technology, we can fasten the search speed by 40% by skipping Yahoo Japan, and working with Google directly. “