Google completes the DoubleClick deal after EC clears the acquisition

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

The European Commission (EC) announced on 11 March 2008 that it has
cleared the Google-DoubleClick deal after its investigation made according
with the EU Merger Regulation.

The decision of the EC considered that “found that Google and DoubleClick
were not exerting major competitive constraints on each other’s activities
and could, therefore, not be considered as competitors at the moment. 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. The Commission therefore
concluded that the elimination of DoubleClick as a potential competitor
would not have an adverse impact on competition in the online intermediation
advertising services market.”

Also the Commission found out that the Microsoft complaints were not correct
and took the presence of the company on the market as a sign that the new
entity “would not have the ability to engage in strategies aimed at
marginalising Google’s competitors, mainly because of the presence of
credible ad serving alternatives to which customers
(publishers/advertisers/ad networks) can switch, in particular vertically
integrated companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL.”

The EC makes it clear that the decision did not took into consideration the
complaints related to EU privacy and personal data legislation, such as the
one submitted by Privacy International. Also the consumer issues created by
the merger – such as behaviour profiling, as pointed by BEUC, were not
present in the Commission decision.

Mergers: Commission clears proposed acquisition of DoubleClick by Google
(11.03.2008)
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/426&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Google wins Commission approval, closes DoubleClick deal (11.03.2008)
http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=8931

EDRI-gram: EDRI supports PI’s comments on Google-Doubleclick merger
(7.11.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.21/google-doubleclick-pi-edri