Update: FTC investigating Google-DoubleClick deal
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GoogleÂ on Tuesday confirmed that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating itsÂ proposed $3.1 billion purchaseÂ of online advertising seller DoubleClick.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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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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Over five months after the two companies announced their intention to merge, search engine leader Google and display advertising leader DoubleClick petitioned the European Commission on Friday for clearance of their merger terms. This morning, according to the Associated Press, the EC responded by warning that a full investigation of their petition could consume as much as four months.
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Blog: Commission plans to expand its probe beyond Google-DoubleClick to also review Microsoft and Yahoo bids, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.
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InfoWorld - European consumer groups warned the European Commission Thursday thatÂ Google's plan to take over the online advertising company DoubleClick, currentlyÂ under investigation, wouldÂ erode consumers' privacyÂ and would push up prices for online goods and services.
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Google Inc. is confident that its $3.1 billion bid for online ad tracker DoubleClick will win over European and U.S. regulators, a company executive said Friday Â even as advertisers expressed concerns the deal will shrink competition.
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Two privacy groups asked the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission to recuse herself from the commissionâs review of Googleâs merger with DoubleClick.
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WASHINGTON -- U.S. antitrust regulators approved Google Inc.'s $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick Inc. Thursday, removing a key obstacle to a formidable combination in the burgeoning online advertising sector.
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A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee joins FTC in investigating Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick.
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WASHINGTON -- Google Inc. has hired a former Justice Department official to lobby the federal government on its proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc., which is being reviewed by antitrust regulators.
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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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Congress plans to scrutinize Google Inc.'s proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. to gauge the potential impacts on consumer privacy and competition in the online advertising business.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission voted 4-1 to approve the Google acquisition of online ad vendor DoubleClick.
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Online rights groups continue to press the FTC to require privacy protections as conditions of Google's acquisition of DoubleClick.
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(InfoWorld) - A European consumer group has complained that Google's proposed acquisition of online ad broker DoubleClick could hurt privacy rights due to the massive amount of data the companies would hold. In a letter, the Bureau EuropÃ©en des Unions de Consommateurs (BEUC) has asked the European Commission and other authorities to investigate how the deal would affect consumers. Google, whichÂ bought DoubleClickÂ in April for $3.1 billion, refuted the assertion that the deal will harm privacy. "Not surprisingly, we don't agree," said Rachel Whetstone, Google's director of European corporate communications, on Thursday. The company thinks the deal will lead to lower priced ad services for both publishers and advertisers, and the delivery of more relevant ads to users, she said. Google's deal with DoubleClick also prompted scrutiny. The U.S. TheÂ Federal Trade Commission is investigatingÂ the deal following a complaint filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Digital Democracy, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. The groups are concerned how Google will protect its data and users' privacy, including how it will handle cookies and other data that could potentially be used to identify Internet users. The European Commission has not yet been formally notified of the deal by Google or DoubleClick, a Commission spokeswoman said. Acquisitions can fall under the purview of national competition authorities or the European Commission, depending on where the companies do business, their turnover and other factors, the spokeswoman said. Â
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Now that the pairing of online advertising industry giants DoubleClick and Google is receiving extra regulatory attention, both in the US and abroad, the question arises once again: Does a merger of two giants lead to the creation of a single behemoth that can carve out a lion's share of the Web audience for itself? One of DoubleClick's long-time competitors - Burst Media CEO Jarvis Coffin - believes it won't.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will not try to block Google&#39;s acquisition of online ad-serving vendor DoubleClick, the agency said Thursday.