FTC Investigating Google-DoubleClick Deal

An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times is covering FTC interest in Google's purchase of the DoubleClick service. The investigation is in response to privacy group concerns over the amount of information Google will have available to it via its ad service and DoubleClick. Between a few days and a week from now the FTC should either declare the all clear, or elevate the process to a 'second request' stage. That would indicate more serious issues the federal body has an interest in. Google stated it was confident the purchase would hold up under scrutiny. 'In the complaint, the groups noted that Google collects the search histories of its users, while DoubleClick tracks what Web sites people visit. The merger, according to their complaint, would give one company access to more information about the Internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world.'"

Comments

Litmous test

[foniksonik]

Would they (FTC) force Google to spin off a section of the company IF they had developed the technology themselves?

If not then this deal should be fine. If so, well they better be able to prove why... with precedents like Microsoft still around, it'll be a hard sell.

Re:Weird wording

[s.bots]

The merger, according to their complaint, would give one company access to more information about the Internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world. Isn't this going to be the case anyway? If google doesn't have access to more information than any other company, that means that some other company would have the most information. Perhaps google has access to more information than the others combined (though I can't imagine that is the case)?

So.. who's number one right now?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they are complaining that this deal will give Google more information about consumers than any other company in the world. Now, I'm all for a healthy dose of tin-foil in my daily diet but someone has to have more information than everyone else. Am I the only one wondering who has the most information right now and why there isn't a complaint against that company already with the FTC?

Re:Weird wording

[WombatDeath]

It's a very strange point altogether. For any subject X, some company is going to have more information about X than any other company in the world. It's inevitable, unless you somehow manage to enforce some sort of weird inter-company information-sharing law.

Well, no wonder

[Bullfish]

People lie regularly on the net when answering surveys, filling out forms etc. They can still track you, but other than that, they can only have the information you give them. Survey after survey has found people lie when talking about themselves on-line etc. Not a surprise even if it really isn't all that effective. If you are really concerned, there are things like TOR that can help you be anonymous. Ultimately, people have to accept the web is not a private place. If you can see them, they can see you. Act accordingly.

I would like to see a FTC stipulation that after infromation has been "aged", it should be deleted. I doubt though that in these paranoid times it will happen though, so I can only say keep on lying and use TOR etc if you don't like the prying eyes.

As far as google not being evil. They are a business.

Re:How about credit bureaus?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Completely false, have you ever seen a credit report? They basically show available credit vs credit used for each account as well as the status of the account and any delinquencies. Theres maybe 10 fields total for each account. Nothing even close to a list of purchases.

Incidentally, I have seen my credit report. Those guys keep a record of every account you've ever had. They can figure out which ones are mortgages and car loans (that's what I mean by purchases, they don't care about your grocery bill). They know your spending habits and balance on every line of credit you have. They know about every late payment you've ever made. All in all, that's *quite* a lot of information, and I maintain my general point that this information is much more dangerous to consumers (identity theft, anyone?) than what Google can glean of your search history. So again, if you invalidate the merger, shut down the credit bureaus. If we're uncomfortable with companies collecting information on consumers, let's apply the standard universally.

Re:If your worried

[h2_plus_O]

But how do you really stop [someone] from [something]

With a law.

If it was that simple, illegal drugs wouldn't be available, would they? Murder wouldn't happen, right?
We'd need enforcement to ensure compliance with said law, which means empowering the government to inspect private company data to make sure it's not the verboten kind of data we don't want them collecting. This would require congress to grant unprecedented powers to law enforcement, essentially rendering all privately held data subject to government inspection. If you're concerned about private companies having too much information or too much power, think about the ramifications of a government authorized to access (for "verification purposes only") any privately-held business data- I respectfully submit that this would be a worse problem than having private companies legally allowed to capture public data.

There's also the question of how to differentiate appropriate customer information from the kind you want to forbid: for example, my wife owns a small business and (like pretty much all business owners) she keeps track of her customers- this includes having phone numbers and addresses in a database. For a law to do what you're suggesting, there would need to be a legal distinction between the kind of data my wife's business keeps and the kind of data you don't want Google to have. IANAL, but I'm not sure that's legally possible.

Laws are designed to address practical and specific societal issues

They're also highly prone, just like software, to creating unintended consequences that may be less desirable than the problem they seek to correct. Some examples:

• The income tax deduction, designed to make it less expensive to own a home, makes it more expensive for the majority of borrowers (for whom it's cheaper to take the standard deduction) to borrow, by artificially inflating the rate the market will bear.
• The War on Drugs, designed to make drugs too expensive to be used/abused, has instead made drug trade profitable; it is now the funding source of choice for organized crime and we have just as many addicts today as we did when we started.
• The law against hiring undocumented workers is intended to protect domestic labor; instead it creates conditions in which undocumented workers cannot demand comparable wages, depressing the wages domestic workers would theoretically command.
• The income tax for businesses is designed to reduce the tax burden individuals (especially the very poor) pay, by making companies shoulder some of the costs. Companies pass this tax along in the form of higher prices, lower wages and reduced profit, which impact the very poor disproportionately.
• The federal subsidy on food crops is intended to make food cheap and plentiful; however when US farmers undersell global market rates, they put foreign farmers out of work. Those workers then compete for manufacturing jobs in cities, driving down labor costs and putting US manufacturers out of work.

...when anyone blithely suggests 'making a law' to fix a problem, I generally wonder a) how we survived without one for so long, b)whether the right solution really is to expand the role of government in our lives, c) if this new law will be (like so many others) ignored, or d) if it will create worse problems than it solves.
In this situation, where the 'problem' is that a private company might have too much power, I'm suspicious of a solution that involves concentrating even more power in the hands of even fewer people.