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EU to Investigate Google Doubleclick Acquisition
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Nov 14, 2007 09:20 AM
from the gee-maybe-thats-to-much dept.
from the gee-maybe-thats-to-much dept.
the linux geek writes "Google is undergoing an investigation by the European Union for its $3.1 billion acquisition of internet advertiser DoubleClick. "We seek to avoid further delays that might put us at a disadvantage in competing fully against Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and others whose acquisitions in the highly competitive online advertising market have already been approved," said Google boss Eric Schmidt. The United States' Federal Trade Commission has been reviewing the acquisition since May."
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Article text (Score:4, Informative)
EU will investigate Google deal
European Union regulators have launched an in-depth investigation into Google's $3.1bn (£1.5bn) takeover of online advertising firm DoubleClick.
The EU Commission said its initial probe had shown the deal would raise competition concerns.
It has set itself a deadline of 2 April 2008 to reach a decision.
Google said it would work with the Commission to show how the acquisition would benefit publishers, advertisers and consumers.
"We seek to avoid further delays that might put us at a disadvantage in competing fully against Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and others whose acquisitions in the highly competitive online advertising market have already been approved," said Google boss Eric Schmidt.
The European Commission is working closely on the case with the US Federal Trade Commission, which has been reviewing the deal since May.
Both Google and DoubleClick are involved in online advertising, although they have different roles.
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.
Birthday present for the Emperor of Europe (Score:2)
Charlemagne will be 1,266 years old on April 2, 2008. That's a lot of candles! Fitting that the Emperor Google will (or won't) be allowed to acquire Doubleclick on the (old) Emperor of Europe's 1,266th birthday!
-mcgrew
And if... (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone with some business/legal acumen, please explain this to me. I am but a humble geek unaware of the politics of billion dollar companies.
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Oh, it's pretty simple:
Re:And if... (Score:5, Informative)
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The US FTC can block the acquisition if they feel it is not in the best interest of the industry or the economy. The EU has no jurisdiction over the acquisition and can't simply convict them of being a monopoly until and unless there is an abuse of thei
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Global Players and Global Markets (Score:2)
And that's where you're most wrong of all. Not only are the laws different in the EU but they are interpreted and used in a different manner. (read more below)
The whole case against Microsoft in the EU is the best example there is of the difference between passive US regulation and aggressive EU regulation. The EU steps in where the US would wait.
To quote the LA Times [latimes.com]: "In the U.S., a
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That's not a double standard. Nobody likes Microsoft or DoubleClick or their business practices. Google has shown themselves to be at least somewhat ethical as a company and beneficial to the advancement of technology. With Google buying DoubleClick, most of us have taken a "wait and see" approach to see if Google reforms some of DoubleClick's least ethical practices, or if it is business as usual. After the acquisition goes through (assuming it does) expect a stink about "do no evil" and some of their prac
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Keep on sayn' that... But actual actions (as opposed to PR smoke) show that Google is ethically about the same as most huge publically traded megacorps.
Do you have any examples or are you just making shit up? What actions have they taken that you object to? I've heard complaints. The most recent was about their acquisition of a Website statistical analysis company, whose users complained Google had stopped improving the service and left them out in the cold. Of course right after the complaints made news, someone at Google announced they had heard the complaints and were going to push new features out to those users. That right there seems a lot less evi
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Google has been taken to task concerning Serious Privacy Issues (as I'm sure you have heard). There are other concerns. Point Of Fact: Google can have whatever flowery sounding utopian Company Tag Line they wish ("Do no evil, blah, blah, blah..."), but the bottom line is that they are a for-profit publicly traded corporation whose PRIMARY BUSINESS is not Feel-Good Software For The People, but technology based advertising. They have shown through action
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Google has been taken to task concerning Serious Privacy Issues (as I'm sure you have heard).
Nope. I know they sort through a lot of data in an automated fashion. I know they allow people to find public information some people might wish was not public. I don't have a problem with either of those and I don't see how they would be "evil." As far as I know they have a pretty good track record with regard to not handing over the data they collect to anyone without a proper warrant. Would you care to cite a few specific examples of what you consider evil that they've done?
the bottom line is that they are a for-profit publicly traded corporation whose PRIMARY BUSINESS is not Feel-Good Software For The People, but technology based advertising.
Don't consider running a
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General Electric + Honeywell (Score:2)
General Electric and Honeywell were going to merge in 2001. The merger got blessing of FTC, but it didn't get the blessing of European Commission, and thus merger was called off as General Electric didn't want to fight and take the matter into European Courts.
The general question in these cases where two companies are merging, does the combined company via merger gain dominant position in said market. If the answer is yes, there are two possibilities, the merger will be called off or Commission sets remedi
How effective is online advertising anyway? (Score:4, Interesting)
When I visit a page with advertising like
Alot of the big players (Google, Microsoft,
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You are thinking of the wrong kind of advertising (Score:2)
What you are talking about is brandname awareness. Shout your brand loudly and hope it sticks so that when people go shopping they remember your brand and buy it.
Google is closer to advertising as it is done in stores. Google "knows" that you are in a hardware site, so they put up a display of something you might want to buy related to that. If you don't remember it or don't even look at it, though, you probably weren't intrested. Supermarkets don't really care if you look at their displays or not. They ar
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Does bear shit in the woods? Isn't google almost the richest company in the world? Advertising is their #1 business. Of course its profitable. So much i cant even imagine how much.
Either that or Google is a multi-billion dollar money laundering scheme. You know, one or the other. =)
dontdoubleclickmebro (Score:1, Funny)
Paraphrasing Strong Bad (Score:2, Informative)
Market Definitions? What about MS? (Score:3, Insightful)
Last I heard, the closest Google came to being a monopoly was holding 56% of the "internet search advertising" market. That is significantly less market than the general guidelines for investigation into anti-trust normally follow (70% or higher is the norm). The acquisition of Doubleclick is a vertical acquisition. That is to say, acquiring them does not gain Google any more share of that market. Rather it is a complementary market that actually hosts the ads on the cheap and is unrelated to searching. If you broaden the market to either online marketing or marketing in general to include Doubleclick, Google holds a much, much, much smaller share and calling them a monopoly makes no sense at all.
If Google had a monopoly, there might be concern that they were spreading that monopoly into this new market. As it is, however, one of their main competitors is Microsoft, does have a legally recognized monopoly and has quite obviously tied their monopoly to their internet search ad business via the bundled inclusion of IE and IE's default search settings. So far, the EU has not even bothered addressing that abuse, even though it effects this same market. Of course this is just one of the many monopoly abuses of MS they have not gotten around to yet.
Please, please, please for the love of Buddha, do not respond to this comment with a reply about Google search in Firefox until you're prepared to explain which one is a monopoly and understand what bundling is and why it is illegal only for monopolies. I'm so tired of explaining Econ 101 here.
Google = the new Microsoft on /. (Score:2)
No malicious reporting there, after all, using the pejorative "boss" instead of the proper title of "CEO" isn't something anyone would notice. Everyone knows Google is evil, you don't need to market it.
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No malicious reporting there, after all, using the pejorative "boss" instead of the proper title of "CEO" isn't something anyone would notice. Everyone knows Google is evil, you don't need to market it.
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I can't believe no one has an English word negativity index with a Web interface. The words I can think of that could have been used include: Boss, CEO, Chairman, Director, and Head. I'm not sure I'm convinced "boss" is more negatively associated than any of the others, nor am I convinced the usage was intentionally negative instead of accidentally or subconsciously. It could be, but I see no evidence of it.
tag: it'sitsnotit's [nt] (Score:2)
Re:Didn't knew Google was an EU company (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, even American companies need to obey EU law while doing business in the EU.
Parent
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Both Google and DoubleClick do have offices in many EU member states, so your point is academic.
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Re:Didn't knew Google was an EU company (Score:5, Informative)
Companies that do business in a region or country are bound by the laws of that region or country.
Google is bound by US law -- but for the business it does in the EU, it is also bound by the EU. The EU can say, "If you want to do business here, you need to abide by our laws."
They can also say, "If you want to bring your monopoly here, you can pay X in fines for the privilege, or get rid of your monopoly."
Parent
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What do you mean by this? Americans are not ignorant we have a wide list of inventions. We invented:
So take that!! Americans are not ignorant!
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Either that what it really is is that Google trades in Europe (e.g. Google.co.uk, Google.de,...) and so has to follow European legislation there. Even if the purchase was made in the US under US legislation then it impacts all areas that Google trades in and hence the EU believe they have a right to investigate
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Re:Tags (Score:5, Funny)
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"Any internet company providing services within Europe is subject to European law. This applies to Google just as well as any other site that has a presence in Europe. Even if a site's servers are not physically located in Europe, if they are commonly accessed by Europeans, then they are providing a service in Europe and are subject to European laws."
You're wrong on that last bit - as long as there is no "commercial interest", no server outside the EU is bound by EU law. This is why, for example, you can
Foreign Jurisdiction and Prosecution (Score:2)
No, that's not exactly true. They are covered by EU/US law for their actions, even if it's in a foreign jurisdiction. Both commercial and non-commercial activity, including libel speech, is subject to domestic laws. The only problem is the actual prosecution of the people involved. Blocking the offending website is easy of course.
If it's a major company in the Western world you can be sure they will be held accountable. And possibly even extradited to the US/EU
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The Canadian Nazi won't be "held accountable" in Canada - unlike the US, our laws don't permit the prosecution of someone for a crime committed outside of the country, with the sole exceptions are pedophilia/child sexual assault - sections 150ff of the Canadian Criminal Code. Even murderers have to be extradited. And its unconstitutional to extradite for something that isn't an offense in Canada. So, while offering to sell Nazi memorabilia might be an offense in Germany, Canada won't extradite since it isn
Extradition and Jurisdiction (Score:2)
With the notable exception for war crimes [nytimes.com] of course. And a quick look brought up other interesting examples such as PART II.1 Section 83.18(3)(c)(ii) of your Criminal Code [justice.gc.ca] relating to committing an offense "... an act or omission outside Canada that, if committed in Canada, would be a terrorism offence;". Now, I'm not a Canadian lawyer but I would hazard a guess that there are more examples.
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You bring up some good points.
The whole "war crimes" bit isn't being enforced all that vigorously any more - every few years, we find some old fart who has spent the last 50 years hiding ... its pitiful.
. where an act or omission is committed outside Canada and the act or omission, when committed in those circumstances, is an offence ...
The question is - is it an offense if the act or omission had been commited on Canadian soil. If its not an offense in Canada, its simply not an offense as far as our
Welcome to our jails (Score:2)
Yes, that's exactly it. They are covered by US law for their actions in the US. Any commercial activity or libel speech is subject to US laws. The only problem for the US legal system is prosecuting the owners of said company. If it's a major company in the Western world you can be sure they will be held accountable and possibly even extradited to the US. If it's a Russian hacker, you can be sure he'll be arrested when he