In a last-ditch effort to win US antitrust approval, Yahoo Inc and Google Inc have drastically scaled back the scope of their search advertising deal, calls for Google to place ads next to some Web search results on Yahoo, lifting Yahoo's revenue.

The companies had said in June that the search ad deal was expected to boost Yahoo's cash flow by up to $450 million in the first year.

San Francisco - Google and Yahoo are set to drop their proposed ad alliance possibly as early as next week because of antitrust objections by the Justice Department, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The report came a day after officials from the two companies met with regulators and appeared to be unwilling to make the compromises needed to satisfy Justice Department concerns that their combined power would overwhelm the online advertising market.

The deal was announced in June and proposed that Google start selling its search ads throughout Yahoo's US properties.

San Francisco - Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc on Thursday said its third-quarter profits jumped 26 per cent, as more people used Web search advertisements to increase sales amid the continuing economic downturn.

Google's net income rose to 1.35 billion dollars from 1.07 billion dollars, according to a company statement. Its revenue grew 31 percent to 5.54 billion dollars, up from 4.23 billion dollars a year earlier.

San Francisco - The internet giant Google is to appeal two German court decisions that found it violated copyright law by showing thumbnails of works by two artists in search results, PC World reported Tuesday.

The cases involved Google's Image Search feature in its search engine. The courts ruled that showing thumbnails of the images in its results list was a violation of copyright laws.