Google Completes AdMob Acquisition

Google has officially announced its acquisition of mobile advertising startup AdMob. The acquisition was held off for more than six months as the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigated the possible monopoly implications of the deal. Google owns the largest online advertising network in the world and, at the time, AdMob was the largest mobile advertiser. Now that the $750-million deal has been approved by the FTC, Google has closed the deal and completed the acquisition.

“Today, we closed our acquisition of AdMob. Omar Hamoui has built a great team and great products at AdMob and we’re thrilled to officially welcome them to Google,” Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, wrote.

“We’ll now begin the process of bringing our products and teams together in the best way, and building new products and features together. We’re working to make this integration happen as fast and as seamlessly as possible. We’ll actively keep our clients up-to-date as we bring our businesses together — stay tuned!,” she added.

Things weren’t looking good for Google at one point, as the FTC seemed determined to block the deal. Google’s dominant position in online advertising has drawn the attention of regulators around the world and any deal it wants to make goes through a more thorough scrutiny than it would normally. Reports from experts and developers consulted by the FTC as part of the investigation indicated that the regulators were keen on finding something to use against Google.

It didn’t happen, but the fast-moving market has changed since Google first intended to acquire AdMob, especially with the arrival of Apple through its acquisition of Quattro, another mobile advertising startup. But there’s plenty of room to grow yet, which is what Google is betting on. It already offers a number of solutions for mobile advertising, from its own search ads to the in-app ads AdMob provides and the company says it plans to offer advertisers even more options.