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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.
Sorry, even American companies need to obey EU law while doing business in the EU.
Companies that do business in a region or country are bound by the laws of that region or country.
Google is bound by US law -- but for the business it does in the EU, it is also bound by the EU. The EU can say, "If you want to do business here, you need to abide by our laws."
They can also say, "If you want to bring your monopoly here, you can pay X in fines for the privilege, or get rid of your monopoly."
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
...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
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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Sorry about that, I'll get on that as soon as I can. I'm working on the First Post and Goatse problem right now.
What do you mean by this? Americans are not ignorant we have a wide list of inventions. We invented:
So take that!! Americans are not ignorant!
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
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.
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.