14 DAY TRIAL // The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission which analyzed the Google - DoubleClick acquisition sustained the transaction should go forward because the two companies are not direct competitors in the advertising market, Reuters reported today. In case you missed the news, a few months ago, the Mountain View super giant announced that it has reached a deal with DoubleClick, a top player on the advertising market to acquire the company and its services. Because this move could make Google the clear leader of the competition, several other companies including Microsoft and AT&T demanded the regulators' investigation to approve or block the acquisition.
The case was then started and the DoubleClick acquisition was analyzed by the regulators from both US and Europe. After several efforts to prove that the deal would not harm the competition and would not infringe any antitrust law, the Australian regulator body approved it today, saying that the two firms are not rivals on the online advertising market.
Even if the Google - DoubleClick deal was put on hold, the other rivals of the super search giant already took measures and prepared themselves for the battle. While the Redmond-based software giant Microsoft acquired advertising company aQuantive for no less than $6 billion, the Sunnyvale portal Yahoo bought the remaining shares of Right Media, a firm which is supposed to support its efforts to challenge the rivals.
But that's not all. All the Google rivals made pretty smart moves on the advertising market while the search company struggled to convince the regulators to allow the DoubleClick deal. For example, Microsoft signed a deal with social network Facebook last week to become the exclusive provider of the adverts on all websites of the service. This includes the international pages of Facebook and also the global website. Imagine that this agreement might have an important impact over the evolution of the advertising market because Facebook sustains that approximately 200,000 new members register for an account every day.