Russian Regulators Block Google Online Advertising Acquisition

An anonymous reader writes "Russian regulators will not let Google buy a local online advertising company, halting a $140 million deal agreed to in July. Google had planned to acquire Zao Begun, which has a search and contextual video and text advertising business. Begun is owned by Rambler Media, a Russian company that own various Web sites and runs a search engine. Google said it is reviewing the decision of Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) and hasn't decided how to react. Slashdot has previously covered some of the issues surrounding Google's muscle in the advertising market."

Kudos for the Russian regulators for...

[Jane Q. Public]

... yet again being smarter than the United States monopoly regulators in recent years.

Hey, American people: if you want to look for reasons why we are no longer on top, look straight to your government. You have looked to them solutions but they have been delivering the opposite.

Try thinking for yourselves for a change.

Re:Kudos for the Russian regulators for...

[retech]

Sadly, all of the recent gov't events seem to point to a clear corporate ownership. The few who care are grossly outnumbered by the ignorant, the ones who don't care and the ones scared shitless.

Re:Controlled propaganda

[lysergic.acid]

what kind of propaganda has Google put out? controlling the media is the way to put out propaganda. advertising is mainly used for branding and manipulating consumer purchase decisions. perhaps they're promoting consumerism in Russia, but it's still the media conglomerates who control TV/radio/newspaper/etc. that write the propaganda and influence societal perception & cultural attitudes.

although in a consumerist society advertising dominates our culture, it's still the media that are the gatekeepers of information and our window into the world. the internet has actually democratized the media by allowing the public to bypass traditional channels of media distribution which are largely been consolidated and tightly controlled by a handful of media corporations.

by supporting net neutrality, public internet access, open wireless networks, and generally promoting a free & open internet, Google is actually helping to decentralize media control and content distribution. YouTube lets anyone create video content and distribute it to millions of viewers. Google search also helps people browse the sea of information on the web on their own terms--compared to TV networks that restrict what you watch and decide for you what information you want to access.

ZAO, not Zao

[tetromino]

The official name of the company is ZAO Begun. However, "ZAO" is simply the Russian abbreviation for "proprietary joint stock company"; in the West, an equivalent formal corporate name would probably be "Begun Pty Ltd."

In any case, the summary uses "Google" instead of "Google, Inc."; and "Rambler Media" instead of "Rambler Media, Ltd." Seems rather odd that of the 3 corporations mentioned, only Begun was listed with its full official (though miscapitalized) name.

Re:Controlled propaganda

[eltaco]

ugh, enough already. google & youtube have censored it all. whether it's as trivial as beautiful agony vids on youtube, sucking chinese censor cock to get a market share or giving commercial sites more facetime; it's all about the buck.
seeing as you don't get that, I'm not surprised you see a difference between advertising and propaganda. same shit, different "smile".

maybe you can understand these words: don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Re:Really???

[pin0chet]

How is Google not playing by the capitalist rules? Just ten years ago, Google was a grad student research project, and now it is the global leader in Web advertising. It's crucial to realize how Google came about, because the firm that ultimately dethrones Google will emerge unexpectedly from humble roots.

Look, nobody is forcing Internet users to rely on Google for search. The reason for Google's continued dominance isn't because it is an evil monopoly, but because Google managed to build a platform that a lot of people like. The success of Google has spurred competitors like Microsoft to invest serious cash to develop a superior set of online services, Isn't that exactly what capitalism is all about?

Re:Controlled propaganda

[Anpheus]

I looked up this "beautiful agony" thinking maybe it's gore or something, but I'll summarize for the unaware here:

Women masturbating (presumably) and moaning with only their face shown to the camera.

Given that youtube wants to remain a family-friendly site, and your beautiful agony videos can be pretty easily found via Google, I don't see the problem. Youtube is a video site with a few rules, and they are allowed to enforce those at will. They host the content, they write the rulebook. Google is a search engine and they generally do a great job. And their choice in China was "Censor results" or "Go back to America." Given the choices, and the fact that Google informs people that their results have been censored as per provisions of the government, aren't you glad that Google is doing business there?

Baidu, leading search engine in China, doesn't inform people that their searches are censored, in fact it denies those allegations. Yet it's fairly obvious to people outside of China that the cost of doing business there is agreeing to such draconian rules.

Re:Google made a major mistake

[pimpimpim]

Luckily, the US is different. It has institutionalized bribery, just pay at election time and reap the results later. You don't even risk doing something illegal in the process.