14 DAY TRIAL // The Federal Trade Commission started an antitrust investigation over Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, an advertising company that was bought by the search giant for $3.1 billion. Just after the acquisition was officially confirmed, several names, including Microsoft, complained about the transaction, saying that it might infringe the antitrust rules imposed by the authorities. Today, the FTC settled to have a closer analysis over the acquisition and decide whether it should start an investigation or agree on the deal.
"We think it's very important that the F.T.C. is taking a look at the Google-DoubleClick deal," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy rights group, according to the New York Times. "To the extent that a reduction in competition could make it more difficult to protect privacy, it could be a consideration. But it would have to be linked to competition. Strictly speaking, privacy is not an antitrust issue," said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University as the same source reported.
It seems that Mountain View company is not only forced to answer questions asked by the US authorities but also coming from the European Union that also wants to analyze the DoubleClick acquisition. Back in 2006, the European Commission had one of the most famous investigations over the Redmond company Microsoft, after the software giant was accused for antitrust violations. At that time, the EU imposed a huge fine for Microsoft that made several appeals to the rule.
Although an official decision from the Federal Trade Commission is still expected, the Google rivals took measures and tried to reply to the acquisition with their own weapons. The Sunnyvale company Yahoo acquired Right Click Media, an advertising company similar to DoubleClick, while Yahoo bought aQuantive for $6 billion, aiming to get closer to Google's advertising platforms.