Slashdot Mirror
FTC Greenlights Google-AdMob Deal
coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today said it closed the investigation of the proposed $750 million Google acquisition of mobile advertising network company AdMob. The FTC said that while the combination of the two leading mobile advertising networks raised serious antitrust issues, the agency's concerns ultimately were overshadowed by recent developments in the market, most notably a move by Apple to launch its own, competing mobile ad network."
If everyone is doing it in the same market, then it's not a monopoly, and not a problem.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
It isn't all that inconsistent. An advertising network with a few dozen advertisers and a few dozen content providers is probably viable.
Agreed whole-heartedly, but Google already has AdSense and Doubleclick.net I don't see why they can't just branch out without buying a competitor. Are they afraid of the competition?
A consumer operating system with a few thousand users is probably a joke.
I could insert jokes, but I think my first comment (the GP in this case) is going to get modded down pretty quickly as it is. I just want to say I think that comparison is apples and oranges.
A more appropriate one would be where MS buys up work-a-like competition just to take them out of the game (and grab their patent portfolios) in order to establish a monopoly. Sort of similar to what it looks like Google is trying to do, except in the web space and not the desktop space. For some reason MS wants to play in both spaces, too; that is neither here nor there, though.
This is how I see it, to be less confusing (I hope):
Google is dominating the web space, others are trying to play catch-up (which is pathetic for a portal like Yahoo which has been around longer). MS is also trying to do the same, but also be dominant in the desktop space too. The only competition Google offers there is Docs and Wave.
Where as MS is dominating the desktop space and doing so by attempting to establish (again) a trust/monopoly in every part of the market. It has the money to make a good run at it. Right now it's skirting the law (and I'd be willing to bet they are lobbying hard to get the law changed).
Every purchase Google makes to make itself more dominant in the web market is pretty much approved, despite the lowering of competition and raising the bar to entry for start-ups. Exactly the same thing MS has been doing for what, almost 3 decades now (and possibly longer)? So why is Google getting special treatment? Because they have a motto that says "Do no evil?"(TM)? Bah, I say. Either the rules are equally applied to all, or they are completely removed from the game. Period.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Seems silly to cite iAd as a competitor when it will literally only ever be allowed on iPhones where in Googles case they will push add on any and every phone.
It depends on how you define the market. If the market in question is "advertising" or even "online advertising" (as opposed to "mobile advertising" as is the case here) then it is absolutely clear that google does not have anything like a monopoly. The narrower your definition of a market the more monopolies you can find. What's so special about having a dominant position in mobile advertising that every other form of advertising out there would not be considered to be in competition with you?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
...should have been fairly obvious considering how the FTC approved the far more questionable acquisition of Doubleclick three years ago. They approved that one on the basis that competition would not be hurt since Google and Doubleclick were not technically in competition with each other. The companies were, nevertheless, placing ads in the same browser windows which brought up issues of consumer privacy...issues which were promptly ignored because, again, there was no threat to competition.
In this case we're dealing with a mobile advertiser merging with (until now) a primarily non-mobile advertiser. Again, no question about killing competition, and a much smaller price tag ($750M versus $3.1B) to boot. I'm not sure what type of consumer protection/privacy issues could be raised, but that's really not the question here.