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EU Approves Google-DoubleClick Merger
A number of readers sent word that EU regulators have cleared the Google-DoubleClick deal. "The commission said Google and DoubleClick 'were not exerting major competitive constraints on each other's activities and could, therefore, not be considered as competitors,' and even if DoubleClick could become an effective competitor in online intermediation services, 'it is likely that other competitors would continue to exert sufficient competitive pressure after the merger.'"
Apparently politicians over there are for sale as well. How could this NOT be anti-competitive? Probably quite a bit with the recent decline in the value of the dollar. I'm pretty sure that European politicians are only bribeable in Euros.
has anyone done any analysis on how the merger will impact current adsense publishers? Will they be able to take advantage of dc services?
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
And my google stock has just gone up 20$, and I can only expect it'll keep going up. Thanks for Christmas in march EU :D
Nothing. Google's primary business is still being a search engine. Doubleclick is an advertising framework and analytics (hence google wanting to acquire it). Search engine != advertising framework. Therefore they don't compete. Funny how things work just like they're supposed to sometimes.
It exists from the firehose submission. Pilot error, it seems.
Demented But Determined.
So the article is at ... uh, nowhere. The source reveals the link to be: <a>
Great.
Thankfully we have the Firehose submission, which contains the actual link.
So I guess the theory behind subscriptions is that subscribers are paying to catch mistakes like that? :P
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Bearded Dragon
Mmmm, your tears sustain me. Cry more, please, cry more. So sweet and salty. You also miss the fact that while google may make its revenue off of ads, it still is not considered an advertising framework and analytics package. Google analytics is nothing compared to doubleclick, which is their primary reason for the acquisition. As mentioned elsewhere in this story's discussion, the analytics are whats important here. Every website makes money off of advertising, google does it with searching. Doubleclick, however, makes their money off of the analytics it offers along with an advertising framework. They are two different things. If you want to say they're the same thing, you may want to ditch the sour grapes and get your head checked.
In capitalist Europe, Google-Doubleclick approves EU!
Or do you really think they coordinate advertising in England from California? If the EU Commission had said no, could they really stop the merger? European companies would be told, "Don't buy from Google-Click or else"? As if all internet servers for European companies are even hosted in Europe? If [company] went ahead with a non-EU regulator approved merger, I imagine the regulators would start fining [company] for whatever reason they turned down the merger.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
But the new Terms and Conditions, to which all publishers must agree to remain in the program, now requires:
That just plain sucks.(A web beacon is also known as a web page; it's a small, invisible graphic placed in the page for tracking purposes.)
However, I'm hoping that a silver lining might be that, if advertising is made more effective by tracking, us publishers might get paid more. But I'm not counting on it.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Do no evil + Do evil = Do everything
Request your free CD of my piano music.
O com-mon. I was enjoying the respite from RTFA Nazis.
I believe the main distinction is that Google and DoubleClick are competing in different areas of online advertising. Google deals primarily with textual advertisements, while DoubleClick sells mostly graphical advertisements.
In addition (to what TubeSteak already said) google is way too big and very present on the European market. To give a counter-example: Facebook used to be quite safe from EU regulations, because even though they had many registered users in the EU they were operating solely from the US. And since their service is "for free" there was no money trail to go for. However, this changed recently: They now have venues in the UK and Germany (and Spain IIRC).
A company has to obey the laws in the countries they do business in. Even if the laws are stupid (China, anyone?), but that's a different story...
I don't read replies by ACs.
Your comment is overrated. Popular World of Warcraft database sites Thottbot.com and Wowhead.com make their money of ads. I imagine Slashdot makes a good deal of money off ads as well. So, does that mean they're competing with Google?
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
I currently block cookies from Double-Click and accept cookies from Google. I'd rather not choose another search engine and quit g-mail, but this may be the best choice. What should I do?
The day that 'Do No Evil' officially died for good.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
It means they're vendors reselling what Google is selling, you twit. Do you think the guy selling Windows out of his shop competes with Microsoft?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Google is currently building a big Data Center here in Belgium($340 million).
for more info
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/Apr/27/google_data_center_project_in_belgium.html
And it looks like it is just the beginning of their European investment.
If Microsoft had a factory store that sold copies of windows, yes.
...that this means Google can fix some of the horrible code/server issues DoubleClick seems to bring with it. A toast, in hopes that soon I won't have to wait thirty seconds while my Firefox window says "Waiting for doubleclick.com" at the bottom. ::salud::
Living With a Nerd
Every website makes money off of advertising
consumerreports.com
Google already has a strong European presence, they have engineering offices in Dublin, London, Zürich, Trondheim, and loads more places. Data centres aren't interesting -- only a few good jobs come out of them.
Day 1: I go to a pub and order a bitter. Bartender serves me, I'm happy.
Day 2: I go to the same pub and order a bitter. Bartender serves me, I'm happy.
Day 3: I go to the same pub and order a bitter. Bartender serves me, I'm happy.
Day 4: I go to the very same pub. Bartender serves me a bitter, just what I was about to order, I'm happy.
Is it that bad? As long as you're a customer, it hasn't always to be a drawback when you're somehow "tracked" and your host makes you offers that suit your taste.
F.
Does it bother anyone else that government is so deeply involved in the dealings with 2 private entities?
Is there a link to this anywhere? A quick search of google news returns only a link to this /. entry. Are there any real-world references to this? Sorry, but news doesn't originate at /., it is merely reposted here, and pardon me, but I'm not inclined to trust anything I find posted here without a reference to an actual news outlet - kdawson is particularly known for journalistic integrity.
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
Well, they'll need somewhere to store all the cookies ;-)
The EU loves to meddle with US Companies, and impose their bizzare form of competition (to a USian) on foreigners. Recent victims include Boeing, Microsoft, and Honeywell.
The pace of this meddling is accellerating; it may be time for the US to engage in a little tit-for-tat to show the Eurocrats the error of their ways.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
http://www.google.com/dclk/messages
Not that it says much, but from the horse's mouth so to speak.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
Day 1: You go to a web site and look at cell phones, don't buy one yet.
Day 2: You go to a web site and look at cell phones, don't buy one yet.
Day 3: You go to a web site and look at cell phones, find one you like and purchase it.
Day 4-365: You get ads for cell phones you don't need, because you already bought one.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Such a huge amount of uninformed claptrap in such a short post.
It's really simple: if companies don't want to be bound by EU laws and regulators, don't do business here. Seriously, you're all more than welcome to boycott the EU if you think that's a preferable option. Mind you, nobody listens when people complain about US companies doing business in China--which has, in real terms, far more black marks against it than the EU--so it's unlikely that US companies will boycott a massively lucrative market any time soon.
Plenty of European companies have fallen afoul of the regulators too, you know, and they somehow manage to do just fine, only generally they stop screwing the consumers (or, more directly, the rest of their respective industries) once they've had their knuckles rapped. Take Siemens for example, who got fined to hell and back and have enacted a new era of corporate governance. Or E.on, who announced a complete U-turn on their previous plans to hold on to their energy-generation monopolies when they realised the regulator might actually be serious.
Of course, it's not like the EU is the only place where regulators and anti-competition laws do their thing. The US used to, before Bush had his way; nowadays the SEC seems to be pretty impotent, the FCC is a laughing stock, the FTC never does anything besides the occasional muttering about spyware, and the DoJ just wants it all to go away so it can sit in the corner and rock slowly in the hope that it'll all get better on its own.
Double Click (at least before Google got them), and heaped tons of disparagement upon the entity, i know the have some quite intelligent people there. One of my friends is there. i'm not saying (rather, not asserting that) the hiring process there is as tough as it is at Google...
i hope D/C becomes one of those companies i can gladly remove from my firewall/blocker. But, it used to be that on Comcast, EVERY site i traversed to having D/C cookies took fracking forEVER to load. Now, tho the SFPL has Comcast, the pages load as fast as if (previously) D/C cookies were not blocked. Might just be a firewall matter, not a cookies matter. But, since Google owns them, it's not entirely impossible that Google has a hidden passthru layer of some sort.
i am NOT saying this with any info from others. It's just my pseudo-conspiracy-theorist-mind at work in that regard.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
It's not regulation that is the problem, it is the extra-territorial jurisdiction asserted by the EU over US companies. For example, when Boeing acquired McDonnell Douglas, the EU required that Boeing scrap its already-signed exclusive contracts with US airlines (Delta, American.) These contracts were legal between two US companies, yet the EU meddled with them -- allegedly for competition reasons, but it was really done to give another bit of the apple to the EU's favorite subsidy child, Airbus.
If you think this is ok, let's look at some possible tit-for-tat responses from the US government. Say, the US thinks that Siemens prices are too low or they are bribing too many EU officials, and fines them 50% of sales worldwide. Or, the US declares that commercial aircraft companies that receive subsidies are anti-competitive, and attaches a special anti-subsidy landing fee on each Airbus aircraft worldwide.
So if you really want a trade war, let's go; if not, the EU should back off.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
'
Request your free CD of my piano music.
We see how well that's worked with Microsoft...
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
Google is not and has never been a monopoly. Microsoft is a monopoly and has been ruled a monopoly by the courts. This puts a burden on Microsoft to play by special rules. ALL monopolies must play by special rules.
Google and Doubleclick were not competitors of one another and that's what the EU ruled. Apparently most don't understand what Doubleclick does/did to make money. Yes, Google makes money on advertisement and they make money on their search service, only you don't see it. They license their search tools/services to other entities.
Even if Google and Doubleclick were competitors (which the ruling specifically stated they were not), they would not put such a burden on competitors as to destroy their competitiveness (which is also essentially what the ruling stated).
I see a lot of Microsoft in these posts. Some don't seem to be able to stand the fact that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist and they don't understand what it means and why it came about. Microsoft has been great at obfuscating the issues they were/are involved in, even today. Again, you can't expect companies that are not monopolists, that were not ruled a monopoly, to play by exactly the same rules. Otherwise there'd be no rules imparted upon the monopoly. Monopolies can be beneficial to society but they almost never are. So, we see a lot of anti-monopoly company rhetoric and those that don't seem to like that are attacking a company that is not, and has never been ruled a monopoly.
Microsoft can't compete except by using it's monopolistic practices and when the Bush administration is gone you can expect a change and greater oversight and maybe even a spectacular battle to come. Other non-monopolies trying to compete that grow in other markets yet still wishing for a level playing field in those markets held by the monopolist, and gain enough power to fight back with their lobbying dollars. As Microsoft implodes, which it will do, has been doing, and will continue to do, it will have less money to bribe and manipulate.
Right now you should understand that you pay more for an inferior product that essentially has become a rehash of old but with a twisted violation on your privacy. They have made you and everyone else pay for and use a product that is so wrong in so many ways. You should be able to see this easily: Look at Vista and how they are going to dismantle XP in favor of Vista when it is clear that the majority feel Vista is inferior and has other factors such as privacy violations, spyware, Digital Restrictions Management, lock in technologies, etc.
You may think there is nothing wrong, but you won't face the fact that if a car company did this you'd be up in arms. Imagine you could no longer buy the car you wanted, you had to buy the car they put out and that you would no longer receive support (gas, maintenance, upgrades, parts) because the car company having the monopoly dictated it. You should be setting the stage as to what and how long that support should exist, not the car company and especially, not the ONLY car company. What would you do if they threatened to sue you because you fixed it yourself or you decided to look for another car company to do business with? You'd be livid. Understand this. Microsoft is telling you what you can do and how you can do it instead of them adjusting to the needs you have. Not only that, they are spying on you to ensure you do it their way and they report back when they think you are breaking their rules. Imagine if the same car company said you couldn't sell your car to someone else? Imagine if they said you couldn't use other parts from another company other than those they suggest. What if they took control of your car and refused to start because they sensed you had turned off the mechanism that allowed them to monitor your car? Again, you'd be livid.
So, this Google/Doubleclick dispute that you have here is literally one where a convicted monopolist has been doing that for a long time and wants to control other markets
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
i think that government organizations should have to approve all decisions. for example, you're on the road, and there's a restroom coming up in 5 miles. you don't really need to use a restroom that badly at the moment, but you're not sure if it's a good idea to stop anyway, or just go another 50 miles down the road to the next restroom. you decide to stop. since this is a decision, what you need to do at this point is fill out 10,000 pages of paperwork to send to a special government agency that approves or declines requests such as this. it takes ten years for the government to get back to you on it, by which time you need a restroom really, really, really, really badly.
Day 7 - you walk into a pub halfway around the world, and the bartender has the same bitter ready. You're there interviewing for a job with a brewery that competes with the one that makes your favourite bitter.
NOW it's a problem.
Its not a trade war, the EU just believes that companies should be regulated, something America clearly believes in too (or are you going to argue against minimum wage & for monopolies). Its just that the EU sets a bar that benefits its citizens ( customers) more than it benefits the owners of companies.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
understand that more than just a few of us blackhole doubleclick.net for a plethora of reasons, and keeps doubleclick stuff on doubleclick's networks, it's fine with me.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312507044494/d10k.htm