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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
The economics and more specifically the political economics are more and more being shifted from science to philosophy if not ideology; as sound as it is to recognize the fact that free markets are the optimum way to prosperity and technological progress, uncontrolled markets would rarely if ever tend towards an optimum equilibrium for the society.
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.