FTC Approves Google/DoubleClick Deal; Gives Warning
While the FTC ruled today that the merger between Google and DoubleClick was “unlikely to substantially lessen competition,” they did offer up a set of voluntary privacy guidelines aimed at web advertisers, though they did eschew privacy questions in their appraisal of the deal.
The deal, beset by conflict-of-interest controversy, went through with a 4-1 vote after it was determined by the commission that Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick did not represent one corporation simply devouring its competition in third-party ad serving markets. Perhaps more significantly, the commission decided that the significant aggregation of private information that would occur with the merger was concerning, but not unlawful.
Pamela Jones Harbour, an FTC commissioner, dissented in the decision, thinking it was too early in the evoultion of the market to decide whether or not the merge posed a significant threat to competition.
As we’re written about before, there is still a problem with this merger in Europe. One important difference between the deal in the US and in Europe is that the market share garnered by Google in Europe would be around 90%, according to some estimates, which is a good deal higher than what Google would have in the US.
This comes on the heels of Viacom dumping DoubleClick and going with Microsoft. The ad battle is truly on between the two. Certainly, Microsoft will do all it can to outduel Google in the states and scuttle the deal in Europe. More on the battle upcoming…
Technorati Tags: google, doubleclick, ftc, microsoft, viacom
