EU Will Examine Google-DoubleClick Merger
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The European Commission's antitrust arm will use the next four weeks to pore over the specifics of the merger between Google and DoubleClick to ensure that it falls within the boundaries of the EU's strict laws regarding monopolies.
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WASHINGTON -- The chairman of a Senate antitrust panel said Thursday that Google Inc.'s proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of online advertising firm DoubleClick Inc. "warrants close examination" by federal regulators.
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, California  - Google Inc Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Wednesday his company is working closely with regulators and that he was optimistic its proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick will be approved.
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Google filed with the European Union competition regulator on Friday for permission to buy rival DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, the European Commission said.
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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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(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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BRUSSELS, May 25 -- An independent European Union panel is investigating whether Google's Internet search engine follows European privacy rules, which tend to be stricter than those in the United States.
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Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick is the target of a formal FTC investigation, focusing on privacy issues and on the possibility that the merger raises antitrust issues.
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The European Commission is studying the U.S. court decision favoring Oracle's PeopleSoft buyout and deciding whether to pursue its own objections.
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The Center for Digital Democracy and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have jointly renewed their request that the FTC consider privacy issues in its ruling on the antitrust implications of the proposed Google-DoubleClick merger.
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InfoWorld - A European consumer group has complained that Google&#39;s proposed acquisition of online ad broker DoubleClick could hurt privacy rights due to the massive amount of data the companies would hold.
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In what is being described as an unusual move, members of the European Parliament are urging trade regulators to expand their review of Google's proposed $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick.
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Google executives are expected to testify about their planned $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, a deal facing scrutiny from federal antitrust regulators.
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A US congressional subcommittee is investigating Google Inc.'s $3.1 billion purchase of online advertising company DoubleClick Inc. , the panel's chairman said.
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(InfoWorld) - Google's proposed merger with online advertising server DoubleClick would create a giant that would control a huge portion of online advertising and hurt the Internet, opponents of the deal told U.S. lawmakers Thursday. The merger, proposed in April, would create "extreme market concentration," said Scott Cleland, chairman of Netcompetition.org, an advocacy group representing large broadband providers. The merger would leave online advertisers with "no real competitive choice," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith argued that the marriage of Google and DoubleClick will allow Google to control 70 percent of the search-based advertising market and 80 percent of the online display advertising market. Smith, whose company is still under court supervision for its ownÂ 2002 antitrust settlement with the U.S. government, suggested regulators should reject the Google-DoubleClick merge on antitrust grounds. "What are the economic consequences of allowing the largest company in online advertising to acquire its most significant competitor?" Smith said. "If Google and DoubleClick are allowed to merge, Google will become the overwhelmingly dominant pipeline for all forms of online advertising." But David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, argued that DoubleClick has a different business model than Google. "We are confident that our purchase of DoubleClick does not raise antitrust issues because of one simple fact: Google and DoubleClick do not compete with each other," he said. "DoubleClick does not buy ads, sell ads, or buy or sell advertising space. We sell ads, DoubleClick delivers ads." Microsoft's estimates of Google and DoubleClick controlling 80 percent of the display ad market is a "made-up number," Drummond added. A little more than a month afterÂ Google announced plans to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, Microsoft announced that it would saidÂ acquire aQuantive, a digital marketing services agency, for $6 billion.Â YahooÂ andÂ AOLÂ have recently announced their own acquisitions in the online advertising space. Cleland argued that the Google-DoubleClick deal represents the biggest threat to competition in online advertising. He called the U.S. government's antitrust review "a watershed moment for Internet competition." Google's own "uniquely monopolistic" mission statement says it wants to "organize the world's information," Cleland added. "No other entity currently has such a naked ambition to control or effectively corner the market for any of the world's commodities, let alone all the world's information," he said. In addition to the antitrust issues raised at the hearing, Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, voiced concerns that the merger will have a huge effect on consumer privacy. The combined company would control a huge database of customer data, Rotenberg said. Regulators in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe "appear to be in agreement that there is no merger that poses a more significant threat to online privacy than Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick," Rotenberg said. "This is going to be a real problem for the Internet if it's allowed to go forward." Google believes "deeply in protecting online users' privacy," Drummond answered. Google has announced plans to make IP addresses and cookies anonymous, and the company is working on several other privacy initiatives, he said. Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, asked Google's Drummond how the company can complain about the lack of broadband providers when its merger could create a dominant Internet advertising provider. Companies wishing to advertise online have "many, many choices," Drummond said, while most consumers have the choice of one or two broadband providers. But Hatch also suggested to Microsoft's Smith that Google could lose advertising market share if a better search engine comes along. "Where is the antitrust problem?" he said. "Why not just build a better product?" The online advertising market is consolidating rapidly, Smith said. Companies wishing to advertise online will soon be left with one to three choices, he predicted.
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European Union regulators on Monday  extended the deadline for their inquiry into Web search leader  Google's proposed purchase of rival DoubleClick to November 13  from October 26.
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Executives from Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are scheduled to testify before a Senate panel today on the search engine company's planned $3.1 billion acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick Inc.