FTC head criticized over potential Google-DoubleClick conflict
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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.
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Google filed with the European Union competition regulator on Friday for permission to buy rival DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, and the deal almost immediately became contentious.
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Nearly lost in the news about the&#160;U.S. Federal Trade Commission&#39;s (FTC) approval on Thursday of Google&#39;s acquisition of DoubleClick&#160;was another action by the agency: The publication of a proposed set of privacy principles governing online behavioral advertising.The release of the privacy principles is an important and welcome step, said Peter Swire, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and a law professor at Ohio State University. Although some privacy groups blasted the FTC for approving Google&#39;s DoubleClick deal, the acquisition has helped place focus on the entire online advertising industry&#39;s privacy practices, Swire said.&quot;It&#39;s good that the FTC is shining a spotlight on this industry,&quot; Swire said Friday. &quot;Online advertising is in its second boom. They&#39;re trying lots of new techniques; some of those techniques have privacy problems.&quot;The FTC hosted a workshop on behavioral advertising and privacy in November. The agency&#39;s proposed privacy principles, a series of &quot;self-regulatory&quot; steps the FTC is recommending for online advertisers, come in part from that workshop.Among the FTC&#39;s proposals:-- Web sites that collect information for behavioral advertising should provide a &quot;clear, consumer-friendly, and prominent statement&quot; about the reason for collecting that data. Consumers should be able to choose whether they will allow that information to be collected.-- Any company that collects or stores consumer data for behavioral advertising should provide &quot;reasonable security&quot; and should keep data only as long as necessary to fulfill legitimate business or law enforcement needs.-- Companies should only collect sensitive data for behavioral advertising if they obtain express consent from the consumer.The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a group focused on online privacy and civil liberties, also praised the FTC for releasing its privacy principles. The principles are a &quot;clear sign that the commission does not believe that the industry&#39;s current self-regulation framework is sufficient to protect consumers today,&#8221; CDT Deputy Director Ari Schwartz said in a statement.CDT also called on Google to &quot;step up and make a clear, public statement about its plans for proactively protecting consumer privacy.&quot; Consumer privacy in the behavioral advertising market remains an industrywide concern that requires the focus of consumers, policymakers and companies, CDT said.The release of the privacy principles should send a signal to online advertisers, said Leslie Harris, CDT&#39;s president. &quot;In releasing these principles, the FTC hasn&#39;t closed the door to other options,&quot; she said in a statement. &quot;Self-regulation is part of the solution for protecting consumer privacy, but clearly self-regulation hasn&#39;t lived up to its promises.... We&#39;ll need a rigorous mix of self-regulation backed by regulatory enforcement.&quot;Other privacy groups criticized the FTC for its ruling allowing Google&#39;s acquisition of DoubleClick to move forward. The agency had reason to act on privacy concerns raised by the merger and failed, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), one of three privacy groups that asked the FTC to block the merger or impose privacy conditions.The FTC could have established &quot;the necessary safeguards for personal data and competition that could have allowed a global [privacy] framework to emerge,&quot; Rotenberg said. &quot;[The FTC&#39;s] sole purpose is to protect the public interest. It failed to do so ... in a case that will have far-reaching implications for the Internet economy and the privacy rights of American consumers.&quot;Joseph Turow, a communication professor at the University of Pennsylvania, agreed. The European Union is still investigating the Google-DoubleClick deal, with a decision not due until April, and it is likely that regulators there will take a harder look at privacy issues, he said.Consumer tracking and privacy should be part of the FTC&#39;s antitrust review when it looks at online advertising deals, he said. &quot;You can&#39;t talk about the digital advertising market today without talking about competition in targeting Americans,&quot; he said.Google supports the FTC&#39;s efforts to create privacy guidelines, David Drummond, the company&#39;s senior vice president for corporate development and chief legal officer, said in a blog post. &quot;The FTC&#39;s decision publicly affirms what we and numerous independent analysts have been saying for months: Our acquisition does not threaten competition in what is a robust, innovative, and quickly evolving online advertising space,&quot; Drummond wrote. &quot;In fact, we firmly believe the transaction will increase competition and bring substantial benefits to consumers, web publishers, and online advertisers.&quot;Critics failed to show specific privacy harms, added Thomas Lenard, president of iGrowthGlobal, a conservative think tank. &quot;I don&#39;t see a problem because nobody has demonstrated the acquisition will result in any privacy harm to consumers,&quot; he said. &quot;All the allegations are very hypothetical. Privacy advocates assert that Google&#39;s and DoubleClick&#39;s activities injure consumers, but they don&#39;t provide any evidence.&quot;If the FTC had blocked the deal, it would be &quot;penalizing success, and that would send a bad signal to the marketplace,&quot; Lenard added. &quot;That would also be bad for consumers.&quot;
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Federal Trade Commission has concerns over privacy issues and competition in Google's proposed $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick.
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But not without dissent The FTC has voted to approve Google's of web advertising powerhouse DoubleClick, after an eight month investigation - but not without a dissenting voice.â¦
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U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)&#160;Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras won&#39;t recuse herself from considering the antitrust implications of&#160;Google&#39;s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick, despite a request from two privacy groups that she do so.
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The changes are in response to a complaint by Google that a feature of the operating system is anticompetitive.
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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.
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Europeâs major consumer group said Wednesday that it feared Google Inc.âs takeover of DoubleClick Inc. would damage European Union privacy rights and limit consumersâ choice of Web content.
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The head of the Federal Trade Commission said Friday she won't remove herself from an antitrust review of Google Inc.'s purchase of online advertising company DoubleClick, rebuffing requests from privacy groups opposed to the transaction.
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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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A European consumer group has complained that Google Inc.'s proposed acquisition of online ad broker DoubleClick Inc. could hurt privacy rights due to the massive amount of data the companies would hold.
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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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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee has opened an investigation into Google'sÂ proposed $3.1 billion acquisitionÂ of online advertising seller DoubleClick. The House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection will look into the "far-reaching privacy and competition issues raised by the proposed acquisition," Representative Bobby Rush, the subcommittee chairman, said in a statement. Rush informed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission of the investigation in a letter sent Tuesday. In May, the FTC opened its own investigation into the proposed acquisition. The subcommittee will seek to host a hearing on the acquisition later this year, Rush said in the letter. Consumer groups haveÂ raised concernsÂ that the combined company would be a threat to privacy. In April, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research GroupÂ asked the FTC to blockÂ the merger unless it obtains guarantees from Google and DoubleClick that they will protect Internet users' privacy. The groups want Google to destroy all cookies and other persistent identifiers resulting from Internet searches that are or could be personally identifiable once a user terminates a session with Google. Other groups have raised concerns about the acquisition's effect on competition in the online advertising market. Rush, an Illinois Democrat, shares those concerns, he wrote to the FTC. "The subcommittee takes very seriously the protection of consumer privacy," he added. Google said in a statement issued Thursday that it was confident the FTC will conclude the acquisition "poses no risk to competition." The Senate Judiciary Committee is also planning hearings on the online advertising space, including recent acquisitions by MicrosoftÂ and Yahoo, according to a source familiar with the hearing plans. Â
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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 took a step closer to its acquisition of online advertising server DoubleClick on Thursday, when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved the sale. One major hurdle still remaining is approval by the European Commission.
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Europe's major consumer group BEUC said Wednesday that it feared Internet search engine Google Inc.'s takeover of online ad tracker DoubleClick Inc. would damage European Union privacy rights and limit consumers' choice of Web content.