The whispering campaign favoring Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick has begun, as a number of antitrust observers predict FTC approval of the deal.
Analysts: Privacy Won’t Stop Google, DoubleClick
A broad field for Internet advertising will trump the privacy concerns of the anti-Google crowd regarding its $3.1 billion deal for DoubleClick. The astonishing amount of personal information Google would have at its fingertips won’t prevent the Federal Trade Commission from approving the deal.
That’s the view expressed by a number of analysts with antitrust expertise. Reuters cited several who think the buy will be approved:
Steven Sunshine of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher and Flom LLP said privacy concerns about the merger were irrelevant.
“What we’re really talking about is Internet advertising. The companies are in a slightly different space. The field is too open, and there are too many competitors,” Sunshine said.
That “slightly different space” represents what has been Google’s strategy when questioned about the deal. We do search ads, DoubleClick does display ads, those are totally different businesses, they contend.
Few things in life are as simple as that, yet an outside view of Google’s big purchase may be all the FTC needs to rubber-stamp it. If and when it happens, the issue of trusting Google with multitudes of personal browsing habits or not falls to its Internet users, not federal regulators.
