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Double CLick is OK !!

/pd [PersonRank 10]

Thursday, December 20, 2007
16 years ago2,627 views

breaking news – acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. been ratified by FTC – Google must be veryhappy

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Google also sent out a newsletter jusg now telling that the US Federal Trade Commission cleared their planned acquisition of DoubleClick. Google says:

<<Google and DoubleClick are complementary businesses and do not compete with each other. Google's current business primarily involves the selling of text-based ads, while DoubleClick's core business is delivering and reporting on display ads. DoubleClick does not buy ads, sell ads, or buy or sell advertising space. Rather, it provides technology to enable advertisers and publishers to deliver ads once they have agreed to terms, and to provide advertisers and publishers statistics relating to those ads.>>

Google of course displays much more than just text-based ads. What do you all think of the other arguments that the two aren't competing?

/pd [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

reuters has released an article

http://www.reuters.com/article/innovationNews/idUSN2039512220071220

PHilipp to answer your question, at times its easier to consume the competing forces (doubleclick) .. Remember that MSFT also had thier eyeballs in this space. The real question – is google become a monopoly ?

/pd [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

oh btw.. European Commission still needs to ratify the deal. They rejected the deal last month and will met again in March.. the battle is only half won .

maybe the Microsoft and Viacom deal helped in swinging the vote to the side of google

Search-Engines-Web.com [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[Moved from another thread – Tony]

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/12/googledc.shtm

At least some Google News for Google:

____________________________________

Federal Trade Commission Closes Google/DoubleClick Investigation
Proposed Acquisition “Unlikely to Substantially Lessen Competition”

The Federal Trade Commission today announced that it will not seek to block Google Inc.’s proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of Internet advertising server DoubleClick Inc. In a 4-1 vote to close its eight-month investigation of the transaction, the Commission wrote in its majority statement that “after carefully reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition.”

Although interested parties have raised concerns about the proposed acquisition’s impact on consumer privacy, the Commission observed that such issues are “not unique to Google and DoubleClick,” and “extend to the entire online advertising marketplace.” The Commissioners further wrote that “as the sole purpose of federal antitrust review of mergers and acquisitions is to identify and remedy transactions that harm competition,” the FTC lacks the legal authority to block the transaction on grounds, or require conditions to this transaction, that do not relate to antitrust. Adding, however, that it takes consumer privacy issues very seriously, the Commission cross-referenced its release of a set of proposed behavioral marketing principles that were also announced today.

The Commission statement, authored by Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras and Commissioners Jon Leibowitz, William E. Kovacic and J. Thomas Rosch, focused on the agency’s antitrust review of the proposed acquisition, which, as in all horizontal merger investigations, was based on the standards set forth in the joint FTC/Department of Justice Horizontal Merger Guidelines. Applying these guidelines, as well as Commission policy and case law in evaluating non-horizontal theories, agency staff analyzed three principal theories of potential competitive harm. First, it sought to determine whether Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick threatened to eliminate direct and substantial competition between the two companies. Its thorough analysis of the evidence showed that the companies are not direct competitors in any relevant antitrust market, eliminating the need for further analysis.

Next, because mergers and acquisitions may also eliminate beneficial potential competition, the agency examined the implications of Google’s continuing efforts to enter the third party ad serving markets. If these efforts had the potential to eliminate a competitor that was uniquely positioned to have a pro-competitive effect on these markets, that would raise antitrust concerns. The agency’s evidence, however, showed that current competition among firms in this market is vigorous, and will likely increase. The evidence also indicates that Google’s entry, even if it were to be successful, likely would not have a significant impact on competition. Therefore, the elimination of potential competition also did not raise antitrust concerns.

Finally, the agency evaluated whether Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick could harm competition by allowing Google to exploit DoubleClick’s position in the third party ad serving markets to the benefit of Google’s ad intermediation product, AdSense. In some instances, according to the Commission, a proposed transaction may allow a dominant seller of one product to harm competition in the market for a related complementary product, for example, by exclusively bundling – or otherwise tying together – its product with the acquired firm’s product after the acquisition. Such a strategy, however, can only be anticompetitive if the merged firm has market power.

As explained in the Commission’s statement, because the evidence failed to show that DoubleClick has market power in the third party ad serving markets, it is unlikely that Google could effectively foreclose competition in the related ad intermediation market following the acquisition. The evidence also showed that it was unlikely that Google could manipulate DoubleClick’s third-party ad serving products in a way that would competitively disadvantage Google’s competitors in the ad intermediation market. Further, the evidence demonstrated that any aggregation of consumer and competitive data resulting from the acquisition is unlikely to harm competition in the ad intermediation market. These factors resolved any competitive concerns related to these markets.

The statement concluded, however, “The markets within the online advertising space continue to quickly evolve, and predicting their future course is not a simple task. Accounting for the dynamic nature of an industry requires solid grounding in facts and the careful application of tested antitrust analysis. Because the evidence did not support the theories of potential competitive harm, there was no basis on which to seek to impose conditions on this merger. We want to be clear, however, that we will closely watch these markets and, should Google engage in unlawful tying or other anticompetitive conduct, the Commission intends to act quickly.”

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