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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."
Not much to it:
EU will investigate Google deal
European Union regulators have launched an in-depth investigation into Google's $3.1bn (£1.5bn) takeover of online advertising firm DoubleClick.
The EU Commission said its initial probe had shown the deal would raise competition concerns.
It has set itself a deadline of 2 April 2008 to reach a decision.
Google said it would work with the Commission to show how the acquisition would benefit publishers, advertisers and consumers.
"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 European Commission is working closely on the case with the US Federal Trade Commission, which has been reviewing the deal since May.
Both Google and DoubleClick are involved in online advertising, although they have different roles.
DoubleClick helps link up advertising agencies, marketers and web site publishers hoping to put ads online and track them.
Google allows firms to target advertising at people using particular search terms and also stores information about users' internet surfing habits.
Last time I checked Google was an American company, bound to America Laws...
And yes, I'm European.
Could someone please get rid of the "dontXmebro" tags on every article?
...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.
Bearded Dragon
Any internet company providing services within Europe is subject to European law. This applies to Google just as well as any other site that has a presence in Europe. Even if a site's servers are not physically located in Europe, if they are commonly accessed by Europeans, then they are providing a service in Europe and are subject to European laws.
Not an expert, but EU would easily prohibit google to operate within EU if they refuse to obey the EU laws, well after they would fine them anways.
I know alot of money is spent on online advertising, but how effective is it really?
/. I am not able to remember afterwards what the advertisements were... Does anyone really look at them?
...) 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?
When I visit a page with advertising like
Alot of the big players (Google, Microsoft,
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It has set itself a deadline of 2 April 2008 to reach a decision.
Charlemagne will be 1,266 years old on April 2, 2008. That's a lot of candles! Fitting that the Emperor Google will (or won't) be allowed to acquire Doubleclick on the (old) Emperor of Europe's 1,266th birthday!
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
What you are talking about is brandname awareness. Shout your brand loudly and hope it sticks so that when people go shopping they remember your brand and buy it.
Google is closer to advertising as it is done in stores. Google "knows" that you are in a hardware site, so they put up a display of something you might want to buy related to that. If you don't remember it or don't even look at it, though, you probably weren't intrested. Supermarkets don't really care if you look at their displays or not. They are there to convince people who were already looking, those people are intrested. When you are shopping for soda drinks a display for a new brand or a special offer will intrest you, that is all after all why you are there.
But as much as you might be intrested, you wouldn't want a show that stops you in your tracks for 30 seconds while shopping to tell you of this great new brand. Google COULD put up huge flashing ads, but it would also interfer with is main business.
You might notice that most personal ads in the newspaper, do not use color, full page, or nude women (well apart from certain sections) that is because a person reading the second hand computer section doesn't need to be attracted anymore, just sold. It is the reason that while shampoo is advertised with gorgeous naked women, it is sold by people fully dressed.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you want it to be possessive, it's just "I-T-S." But, if it's supposed to be a contraction then it's "I-T-apostrophe-S..." scalawag.
For something to noodle on consider aquantive's proposals are true conversion attribution. Google's entire business model takes advantage of incorrect attribution for consumer brand choice.
Last I heard, the closest Google came to being a monopoly was holding 56% of the "internet search advertising" market. That is significantly less market than the general guidelines for investigation into anti-trust normally follow (70% or higher is the norm). The acquisition of Doubleclick is a vertical acquisition. That is to say, acquiring them does not gain Google any more share of that market. Rather it is a complementary market that actually hosts the ads on the cheap and is unrelated to searching. If you broaden the market to either online marketing or marketing in general to include Doubleclick, Google holds a much, much, much smaller share and calling them a monopoly makes no sense at all.
If Google had a monopoly, there might be concern that they were spreading that monopoly into this new market. As it is, however, one of their main competitors is Microsoft, does have a legally recognized monopoly and has quite obviously tied their monopoly to their internet search ad business via the bundled inclusion of IE and IE's default search settings. So far, the EU has not even bothered addressing that abuse, even though it effects this same market. Of course this is just one of the many monopoly abuses of MS they have not gotten around to yet.
Please, please, please for the love of Buddha, do not respond to this comment with a reply about Google search in Firefox until you're prepared to explain which one is a monopoly and understand what bundling is and why it is illegal only for monopolies. I'm so tired of explaining Econ 101 here.
General Electric and Honeywell were going to merge in 2001. The merger got blessing of FTC, but it didn't get the blessing of European Commission, and thus merger was called off as General Electric didn't want to fight and take the matter into European Courts.
The general question in these cases where two companies are merging, does the combined company via merger gain dominant position in said market. If the answer is yes, there are two possibilities, the merger will be called off or Commission sets remedies that make sure the merging company doesn't achieve dominant position in market via merger, i.e. the merged company must sell of some assets. It should also be noted that the EU Commission works both in European wide level and also in regional level, meaning that if by merger companies create a European wide or at least regional monopoly, the Commission will intervene.
I myself think that the EU Commission is doing the right thing here and in other cases. If there wouldn't be any safe guards the corporations would sooner or later collide against consumers and form artificial monopolies. It should be mentioned that if a company gets into a monopoly position by fair competition, the EU Commission wont intervene, only if a company tries to play dirty of leverage it's dominant position from one market to another, then the Commission gets into action.
PS. The EU Commissions right to intervene in merger or acquisition stems from having those companies operating and having major operations in the area of European Union. If Google nor DoubleClick wouldn't have business in EU, EU Commission couldn't do nothing, but as they do, and as the European Commission is in charge, the companies have to also answer to commission on regards on their activities.
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No malicious reporting there, after all, using the pejorative "boss" instead of the proper title of "CEO" isn't something anyone would notice. Everyone knows Google is evil, you don't need to market it.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
What's funny about this is the absolute masturbation fest that happens here every time Google farts. But nary a "Here, here!" peep from the minions about the fact that prior to the acquisition by Google, DoubleClick was the most hated entity on the Interweb short of Microsoft? And what would have been the response from the Google Drones had Microsoft succeeded in acquiring DoubleClick? The DoubleStandards are amusing.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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NT
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
with THOUSANDS of You. Th3 tireless
You said "fugit!"
Heh heh heh
I AM THE GREAT CORNHOLIO!!!
And that's where you're most wrong of all. Not only are the laws different in the EU but they are interpreted and used in a different manner. (read more below)
The whole case against Microsoft in the EU is the best example there is of the difference between passive US regulation and aggressive EU regulation. The EU steps in where the US would wait.
To quote the LA Times: "In the U.S., antitrust law is based more on the effects. If you commit an illegal practice, that practice has to have an effect on the market" ... "In Europe, you don't need to go so far. To prove you've committed an illegal practice is enough to punish your company, irrespective of the impact."
U.S. antitrust regulators rely more on economic analyses than assumptions of how consumers will be affected, antitrust experts say. While the EU philosophy is that protecting competitors helps consumers by ensuring more competition, which could drive down prices.
And finally, of course, the greatest difference is that the EU uses the Civil Law legal system ( from Roman Law ) with the exception of the UK. The UK/US Common Law system has a very different view and methods. On a sidenote the majority of the world's nations use the Civil Law legal system.
How terribly naive of you. Of course the EU can block it. That's why it merits a news item. Google and DoubleClick both operate in the EU, mergers and aquistions are subject to EU approval even if they have US HQ's. This goes for every major merger in the world today. If you don't get both the US and the EU to accept it - it's not happening. We're talking about WTO rules here to be precise.
No, that's not exactly true. They are covered by EU/US law for their actions, even if it's in a foreign jurisdiction. Both commercial and non-commercial activity, including libel speech, is subject to domestic laws. The only problem is the actual prosecution of the people involved. Blocking the offending website is easy of course.
If it's a major company in the Western world you can be sure they will be held accountable. And possibly even extradited to the US/EU if need be. If it's a Russian hacker, you can be sure he'll be arrested if/when he visits the US for a conference. And if it's a Canadian Nazi he can be held accountable when he returns home for his Christmas holiday.
The issue is not jurisdiction, but prosecution. And there are several laws both in the US and EU that target criminal activities in foreign jurisdictions [that are only illegal from a domestic point of view]. The most recent case of this has been hate speech, terrorist activities and training abroad (for the US). And the EU has in addition to the above mentioned issues been concerned with sexual exploitation and human trafficking.
Commit the crime abroad, legal as it may be there, but serve time at home.
With the notable exception for war crimes of course. And a quick look brought up other interesting examples such as PART II.1 Section 83.18(3)(c)(ii) of your Criminal Code relating to committing an offense "... an act or omission outside Canada that, if committed in Canada, would be a terrorism offence;". Now, I'm not a Canadian lawyer but I would hazard a guess that there are more examples.
And according to PART XIV on Jurisdiction, Section 481.2 says: "... where an act or omission is committed outside Canada and the act or omission, when committed in those circumstances, is an offence ... proceedings in respect thereof may, whether or not the accused is in Canada, be commenced, and an accused may be charged, tried and punished within any territorial division in Canada in the same manner as if the offence had been committed in that territorial division.".
Actually that's not the whole truth after the Extradition Act of 1999 the crime no longer has to pass the same "duality test". I quote: "The new process instead requires a analysis of the alleged offense for which extradition is sought and if a similar offense prevails in Canada, ... the test will have been met".
Also extradition is probably subject to the long line of treaties with individual countries that Canada has with most the Western world at least. I found this article on the subject very interesting.
In conclusion the answer has be that it certainly appears as though Canada can prosecute crimes committed abroad however as always certain conditions have to be met. I won't press my point further as I am not familiar with Canadian law and I might also be plain wrong :)
Believe it or not, slashdot is not full of advertising professionals. I know what you are saying, and I think you are wrong, but there's no point in arguing since 99% of the people reading this will see your post as pure gobbledygook. You might want to rewrite that post without jargon, and explain why pay-per-click with analytics is "incorrect attribution for consumer brand choice". Perhaps you are just jealous that Overture got it (mostly) right.
To be clear I wasn't trying to speak with jargon, but to speak efficiently. Maybe I should present an intended audience with each post.
Overture is integrated with Yahoo, which therefore has the ability to ignore this issue entirely anyway.