Recent Google Acquisition Leads to Antitrust Investigation
May 30th, 2007 by msdanielle
Last week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission opened a preliminary antitrust investigation following news of Google’s plan to acquire advertising giant DoubleClick. The New York Times article emphasizes two main points of concern. The first issue raised by privacy groups addresses the concern over the privacy of user data, which although valid, is not the FTC’s main concern in this investigation. The second, and main, issue addressed is the extent to which this acquisition might affect market competition. Google feels confident that the deal will be sealed, and the FTC will conclude in their favor.
According to their web site, the FTC’s Bureau of Competition:
- reviews mergers and acquisitions, and challenges those that would likely lead to higher prices, fewer choices, or less innovation;
- seeks out and challenges anticompetitive conduct in the marketplace, including monopolization and agreements between competitors;
- promotes competition in industries where consumer impact is high, like health care, real estate, oil & gas, technology, and consumer goods;
- provides information, and hold conferences and workshops, for consumers, businesses, and policy makers on competition issues and market analysis.
I’m not surprised by the news of an investigation, as it’s probably standard to scrutinize deals of this magnitude. But I am interested to see what happens. On one hand, Google is creating the largest conglomeration of internet marketing businesses, with access to nearly endless amounts of private user data. But with the flurry of acquisitions in recent months, it will be hard to gauge whether they have boxed out their competition. Can MSN and Yahoo buy enough web properties to stay in the game and truly compete?
Discussions and Blogs (Feel free to add your two cents to them!):
- WebmasterWorld: Google DoubleClick Deal Brings U.S. FTC Scrutiny
- SearchEngineLand: FTC Opens Antitrust Investigation Over Google’s DoubleClick Deal
- SERoundtable: FTC Investigates Google-DoubleClick Deal
If you guys find any additional links to discussions, let me know and I’ll post them here. Thanks Jason for sending me the link to the NY Times article!
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Being investigated doesn’t really mean there is an issue, just that the transaction was large enough within the given mark to warrant a second look. It will be really interesting as you say to see what comes about from this.
If it helps Yahoo! or MSN, I would like to formally offer the sale of all the web properties within my advertising network, just trying to help out the little guy
You’re so kind, Natron!
google was once the little guy… if you take over the internet, please don’t do any evil things with our data
This deal will fly, especially since Microsoft just snatched up Aquantive (for a 70% premium).
Well, I didn’t discuss the FTC investigation, but I did write an article entitled “Is Google Becoming A God” that I think ties in nicely with this discussion.
i was thinking about writing something touching on the topic you started… that is, if i have time this week to write it!
if google were omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, what could they do? (thinking about GoogleMD)
I read your article and it made me laugh. You actually made me think of writing another Google article concerning “proposed” Google projects. I’m not sure I’ll do it now that you’ve done yours, but I really enjoyed reading it.