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2008 may be the year that Google’s innocence ends, as media and governments start to cast a less forgiving eye at the behavior of the company that controls 60% of the search market and perhaps as much as half of all online advertising revenue.

In 2007 the Federal Trade Commission opened an antitrust investigation into Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. The deal was eventually approved, although the EU took a lot longer to give their stamp of approval (The EU in general isn’t a fan of Google).

This year, though, things might not go so well. Politicians are lining up to question Google’s recent search marketing deal with Yahoo. The deal was clearly structured to try to slide past regulators, but it isn’t clear that this time Google will get a pass.


Full article: techcrunch.com 

Labels: advertising, DoubleClick, search, Yahoo

A set of policy position documents reportedly authored by Microsoft made the case that Google could use DoubleClick's advertising network to peer into competitors' traffic -- a position the FTC apparently rejected last week.

Last week, The New York Times blogger Louise Story released copies of a series of documents reportedly shared between Microsoft and US Federal Trade Commission members prior to their decision on the Google + DoubleClick merger. The documents reveal that Microsoft was willing to characterize its own competitive position in the Internet advertising market, both before and after a merger took place, as tenuous and perhaps even unsustainable, in order to distinguish itself against what it described to be a larger, perhaps predatory, competitor.

Full story: betanews.com 

Labels: ads, advertising, DoubleClick, microsoft

Coalition says FTC chair has conflict of interest

A coalition opposing Google's $3.1 billion merger with DoubleClick renewed charges of conflicts and threatened possible legal action over a decision by a regulatory chairman not to recuse herself from reviewing the merger.

In a conference call with reporters today, representatives of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy, said they are considering filing a lawsuit in response to a decision last week by Deborah Platt Majoras, chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Majoras denied a request from the groups that she recuse herself from the merger review after the groups learned that her husband, John M. Majoras, is a partner who specializes in antitrust at the Jones Day law firm representing DoubleClick.

Read more: mercurynews.com 

Labels: DoubleClick, lawyers

Not too long ago, nearly every move that Microsoft made seemed to draw complaints that the company was abusing its market dominance.

Now another market-leading technology company is under fire in Washington as well. An unlikely combination of onetime antitrust defendants like Microsoft and AT&T and liberal consumer groups that have been their traditional antagonists are taking aim at Google.

Interviews by CNET News.com last week show that Microsoft and its occasional allies have met separately with key congressional committees that deal with consumer protection and antitrust issues--both of which announced last week that they will hold hearings on Google's plan to spend $3.1 billion to buy DoubleClick.

Read more: zdnet.com 

Labels: antitrust, ATT, DoubleClick, microsoft

A U.S. House subcommittee plans an additional inquiry into the proposed $3.1 billion merger between Google and DoubleClick. The deal is already under review at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

In a letter this week to FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) said there is "widespread concern" about the deal.

"Concerns have focused not only on the implications for competition -- in online advertising and other possibly affected markets -- but also on the potentially enormous impact on consumer privacy," Rush wrote.

Full article: internetnews.com 

Labels: advertisements, advertisers, advertising, DoubleClick

European group asks for an investigation into how Google's DoubleClick acquisition could affect privacy rights.

A European consumer group has complained that Google Inc.'s proposed acquisition of online ad broker DoubleClick Inc. could hurt privacy rights due to the massive amount of data the companies would hold.

In a letter, the Bureau Europien des Unions de Consommateurs (BEUC) has asked the European Commission and other authorities to investigate how the deal would affect consumers.

Full article: pcworld.com 

Labels: DoubleClick, Europe, privacy

With its empire expanding, the search giant can have an unprecedented breadth of knowledge about you. Can we trust it with so much data?

From search to e-mail, from calendars to spreadsheets and text documents, more and more of what PC users read and create flows through one firm: Google.

Google's pending purchase of online advertising giant DoubleClick (the deal awaited Federal Trade Commission approval as we went to press) will give it access to yet more information: the Web browsing histories collected by millions of DoubleClick cookies. Combine that data with what Google already knows through its homegrown services--Google Apps, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Desktop, and many others--and the company has the potential to know more about you than any one entity ever has.

Full article: washingtonpost.com 

Labels: apps, data, docs, DoubleClick, giant, mail, Maps, search

Almost all my experience with the investment community is from the research side, but I did once work on the propaganda side: investor relations [IR]. For a short time after the troubles began, I was ambushed into doing IR for the ill-fated shared-memory processing manufacturer Kendall Square Research.

And if you know the story of KSR, you know why I did IR only once and for a short time. So based on this meager IR experience, it was with wonderment that I noticed that Google (GOOG) was letting two engineering VPs loose at a Goldman Sachs conference.

By just being there, Alan Eustace and Jeff Huber answered my question posed on seekingalpha on March 7: Is Google a media play or an IT investment? (And with the pending DoubleClick acquisition, add to that question the possibility that it should be measured like a large advertising/communications agency).

Full article: seekingalpha.com 

Labels: applications, DoubleClick, market, technology

I have just heard from a VERY trusted source that Google is buying Feedburner in order to get into the rapidly evolving RSS Ad market. The delay in announcing the deal, I am told is solely due to the delay in closing out the DoubleClick deal.

If true this deal makes a lot of sense for both parties. Today many of us predominately read blogs via our RSS readers and thus never actually visit the original blog source and/or see the sites supporting adverts.

Full story: vecosys.com 

Labels: ads, DoubleClick, Feedburner, market, rss

It's been a good couple of months to be in mergers and acquisitions on Sand Hill Road. Since April 17, companies Time Warner, WPP, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have spent over $10.4 billion to acquire online advertising firms.

That sum, the disclosed amount spent on firms DoubleClick, aQuantive, 24/7 Real Media and the Right Media Exchange--does not include the undisclosed amounts spent on a set of relatively smaller acquired companies such asScreenTonic SA, ADTECH AG and Third Screen Media.

But the biggest buys were Google's and Microsoft's.

Full article: internetnews.com 

Labels: DoubleClick, GoogleClick, Media, microsoft

Search engine company Google has already made two huge acquisitions (YouTube and DoubleClick).

The company now aims to accelerate their acquisition spree for faster growth as they are sitting on huge cash reserves.

Google Chief Eric Schmidt said in a statement that they are going to make more acquisitions and some of them can be huge.

Read more: TechWhack 

Labels: acquisitions, company, DoubleClick, Eric Schmidt, youtube