EU to Investigate Google Doubleclick Acquisition

the linux geek writes "Google is undergoing an investigation by the European Union for its $3.1 billion acquisition of internet advertiser DoubleClick. "We seek to avoid further delays that might put us at a disadvantage in competing fully against Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and others whose acquisitions in the highly competitive online advertising market have already been approved," said Google boss Eric Schmidt. The United States' Federal Trade Commission has been reviewing the acquisition since May."

Comments

And if...

[Ngarrang]

...the EU thinks the deal is anti-competitive, but the FTC does not, would this stop a deal between two companies who are HQ'd in America? I understand that Google and DoubleClick operate globally, but I fail to see where the FTC would care about the EU's opinion.

Someone with some business/legal acumen, please explain this to me. I am but a humble geek unaware of the politics of billion dollar companies.

How effective is online advertising anyway?

[FredDC]

I know alot of money is spent on online advertising, but how effective is it really?

When I visit a page with advertising like /. I am not able to remember afterwards what the advertisements were... Does anyone really look at them?

Alot of the big players (Google, Microsoft, ...) are trying to dominate this corner of the advertisement market, which tells me that companies spend alot of money on online advertisement. But do they really profit from this?