FTC clears Google + DoubleClick, says privacy isn't a big problem
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Perhaps this morning's FTC blessing of Google's intended merger with DoubleClick was no surprise, but a read of the final decision reveals an astonishing reason: The Commission claims it wouldn't really have the authority to stop it.
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Pledges 'constructive' dialogue with Europe Google is reported to be facing a fresh regulatory investigation: this time in the US, and into its acquisition of ad serving firm DoubleClick.â¦
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La Federal Trade Commission Usa indagherÃ  su eventuali lesioni della concorrenza:con l'acquisizione una quantitÃ  abnorme di dati personali degli utenti                                            Google, la FTC apre un'indagine antitrust sull'accordo annunciato con la DoubleClick
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The Federal Trade Commission has opened an antitrust investigation into Google Inc.'s proposed $3.1 billion purchase of ad-management technology company DoubleClick Inc.
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US regulators Thursday cleared a plan by Google to buy online advertising giant DoubleClick, a tie-up that has sparked concerns about privacy risks and still faces a challenge in the European Union.
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The U.S. FTC said it will not block Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, concluding that the deal "is unlikely to substantially lessen competition."
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Two privacy groups are stepping up the pressure on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), saying the agency has an obligation to consider privacy concerns as it prepares to rule on the antitrust implications of&#160;Google&#39;s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick.The executive directors of&#160;the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) repeated their call for the FTC to impose privacy conditions if it approves the merger. It appears that an FTC decision on the $3.1 billion acquisition is &quot;imminent,&quot; said Jeffrey Chester, CDD&#39;s executive director.FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz in October suggested the FTC&#39;s review of the deal had to be about competition questions, not privacy, but Chester disagreed during a press conference on Tuesday. One of the FTC&#39;s main duties is to protect consumer privacy, and the merger of the number one search provider with the number one ad server raises serious privacy questions, he said.Google&#39;s contention that there are no major privacy concerns is &quot;absurd on the face of it,&quot; Chester said. DoubleClick says it serves 8 billion online ads and processes 964GB of Web server log files each day, he said.&quot;It would be a violation of trust, in effect abuse of their own role, in not addressing an issue of such concern as the data-collection apparatus within the ever-growing behemoth,&quot; Chester said. &quot;If they&#39;re really the agency to protect consumer privacy, they will act to protect privacy. If they fail to act to protect privacy, they have basically put up a flag to American consumers saying, &#39;We surrender your data.&#39;&quot;Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich repeated Google&#39;s position that the merger would have positive effects.&quot;This acquisition is good for consumers, advertisers and Web site publishers, and we continue to be confident that it will be approved,&quot; he said. &quot;I would also point out what the FTC itself has said about privacy not playing a role in its review of the deal.&quot;Last week, the two groups&#160;asked FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras to recuse herself from the decision on the merger, saying her husband works for a law firm that is advising DoubleClick on the deal in the U.S.&#160;Majoras declined Monday to recuse herself, saying that her husband isn&#39;t directly involved in the DoubleClick deal and that the Jones Day law firm is advising the company only before European regulators.An FTC spokesman wasn&#39;t immediately available for comment.Chester and EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg repeated their calls for Majoras to recuse herself. Jones Day&#39;s Web site, until recently, said it was advising DoubleClick on the deal in the U.S. as well as Europe, they said.But the most important step the FTC can take is to impose privacy conditions on the merger, Rotenberg said. The case for a privacy review &quot;is very clear,&quot; he said.Chester agreed. &quot;Are they concerned about Americans&#39; privacy, or are they going to give Google a pass?&quot; he said.
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The Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday it approved Google's proposed $3.1 billion purchase of advertising rival DoubleClick.
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The Federal Trade Commission said on  Thursday it approved Google's  proposed $3.1 billion  purchase of advertising rival DoubleClick.
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The F.T.C. has opened an antitrust investigation into Googleâs planned $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick.
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U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras is consulting with the agency&#39;s ethics officer to see if she should recuse herself from a review of&#160;Google&#39;s planned acquisition of online ad network DoubleClick.On Wednesday, two technology lobbying organizations called on Majoras to recuse herself, citing her husband&#39;s involvement in the matter. John Majoras is a partner with Jones Day, the law firm that is advising DoubleClick on antitrust issues relating to the US$3.1 billion buyout. Jones Day representatives, including John Majoras, did not immediately return calls seeking comment.Chairman Majoras &quot;has previously recused herself in similar matters for similar reasons where there was a lesser conflict of interest,&quot; representatives of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) wrote in a complaint submitted to the U.S. regulator late Wednesday. &quot;It is clear that she must recuse herself now.&quot;The chairman is now reviewing the matter with the FTC&#39;s chief ethics officer, Christian White, but an FTC spokeswoman on Wednesday downplayed the possible conflict of interest. John Majoras&#39; law firm has not appeared before the FTC in this matter, according to FTC spokeswoman Claudia Farrell. &quot;We learned only yesterday that Jones Day is representing DoubleClick before the European Commission, not the Federal Trade Commission,&quot; she said.Even so, the Jones Day connection may have influenced FTC staffers or the chairman herself, said Jeff Chester, executive director with the CDD. &quot;There&#39;s no question that there&#39;s a stealth set of influences here that could have shaped the staff opinion,&quot; he said. &quot;We do not know what impact it might have on the chairman.&quot;Jones Day is advising DoubleClick on &quot;international and U.S. antitrust and competition law aspects of its planned $3.1 billion acquisition by Google,&quot; the law firm says in a note on its Web site.The deal has come under scrutiny from regulators in the U.S. and Europe who are examining whether it will give Google too much control over the Internet advertising market and too much data on the online behavior of its users.&#160;
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Google responds to attacks on its privacy record.
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European consumer groups warned the European Commission Thursday that&#160;Google&#39;s plan to take over the online advertising company DoubleClick, currently&#160;under investigation, would&#160;erode consumers&#39; privacy&#160;and would push up prices for online goods and services.In a letter to competition commissioner Neelie Kroes, BEUC, the pan-European Union consumer group, together with three national associations, urged the Commission to use its powers to block the deal in its current form.&quot;Consumers&#39; privacy could be at risk; it is crucial that the Commission integrates privacy concerns into the&#160;Google/DoubleClick merger&#160;review process,&quot; said Monique Goyens, BEUC&#39;s director general in a statement.In addition to privacy concerns, the letter also argued that combined strength of the two Internet firms would harm consumers &quot;with respect to the price, degree of innovation, quality, and selection of online products and services that would likely be available to consumers following the merger.&quot;Neither Google nor the Commission were available to comment.Meanwhile, also on Thursday, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission&#160;cleared Google&#39;s acquisition of DoubleClick&#160;on a 4-1 vote after an eight-month investigation. The FTC concluded that acquisition &quot;is unlikely to substantially lessen competition&quot; and downplayed concerns brought by some privacy groups, saying those concerns are &quot;not unique to Google and DoubleClick,&quot; and &quot;extend to the entire online advertising marketplace.&quot;The Commission&#39;s competition department has until April 2 to decide to permit the deal, approve it on the condition it is changed or prohibit it outright.Competition reviews normally focus on the economic impact of mergers and takeovers, rather than their potential impact on privacy.Consumer groups wrote to Kroes in June, shortly after the planned deal was announced, warning about its impact on privacy. Thursday&#39;s follow-up letter focused on the economic effects of the deal on consumers, as well as reiterating the groups&#39; concerns about privacy.Acknowledging that privacy falls beyond the scope of merger reviews, they nevertheless tried to persuade the Commission to bear it in mind.&quot;Privacy issues raised in our 27 June letter are detrimental to consumers&#39; welfare and ought to be taken into account in the merger review process,&quot; the consumer groups said.Economic harm to consumers would result from the deal because it would strengthen what the groups describe as the super-dominant position of Google in the online advertising industry.&quot;The online advertising market will be placed in jeopardy if the Google/DoubleClick merger is allowed to proceed, because the combined company will dominate both major &#39;pipelines&#39; for online advertising - both the pipeline for search ads and the pipeline for non-search ads,&quot; they wrote to Kroes.&quot;If allowed to proceed, the transaction will enable the world&#39;s largest network for the sale of non-search online advertising (Google) to capture and use to its own benefit the dominant provider of stand-alone ad-serving tools (DoubleClick) used by web publishers to connect other networks to the non-search inventory which they need to survive and which is not already committed to Google,&quot; the letter said.By eliminating competition between the two companies for both stand-alone ad serving tools and integrated ad networks, the deal will ultimately &quot;reinforce Google&#39;s super-dominant position in the market for search ads,&quot; they said.In addition to the possibility of higher prices for consumers, the deal could undermine the common business model for online publishing, which relies on advertising revenue. This could force content providers to switch to a model based around revenue from subscriptions, forcing consumers to pay for what they get free now.&quot;Higher online advertising prices may result in part of the advertising budgets shifting to other media, resulting in less revenue than initially forecasted for web publishers. Such publishers might then be forced to charge users to access content in circumstances where they do not do so today,&quot; the consumer groups warned.&#160;
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The Federal Trade Commission has asked Google for more details about its proposed $3.1 billion purchase of online advertising company DoubleClick as part of an investigation into whether the deal raises antitrust concerns, a Google executive said yesterday.
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Early this morning, The New York Times reported that the US Federal Trade Commission would be expanding its otherwise normal investigation into the prospective merger deal between contextual advertising giant Google and display advertising giant DoubleClick, by issuing Google a "second request" for more information late last week.  Analysts are saying the FTC may be acting on the behest of none other than Microsoft.
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As FTC probe continues... The FTC inquiry was a just a start. In the coming weeks, Google will also face a pair of congressional investigations into its proposed $3.1bn merger with online ad company DoubleClick - one in the House and one in the Senate.â¦
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Privacy advocates want FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras to recuse herself from the agency's review of Google Inc.'s planned $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick because of a possible conflict of interest.