The European Union has launched an anti-trust investigation into Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick. The Commission has stated that the motive behind the investigation is concern over competition in the advertising market.
According to Google, the $3.1 billion deal is a legitimate and timely move to stay competitive with Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo!, and others: “We seek to avoid further delays that might put us at a disadvantage in competing fully against… others whose acquisitions in the highly competitive online advertising market have already been approved.”
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is also participating in the investigation. According to the BBC, Google and DoubleClick “have different roles” in the advertising industry:
“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.”
The EU Commission expects to reach a decision by April 2008.
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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