Google DoubleClick Deal Faces Congressional Inquiry
Google’s purchase of DoubleClick is facing a major hurdle this week as it get more heat from a US congress enquiry. This has been the biggest set back to a $3.1 deal that has been controversial (to say the least) from the get go.
The main issues being investigated are consumer privacy and anti competitiveness, both of which are hallmarks of this high profile deal.
All this comes on the heal of Google’s announcement last week that it will shorten the amount of time that it will hold data collection cookies to two years from the previous 30+ years. However this move on Google’s part may have come too little too late to affect the ultimate decision of the Federal Trade Commission.
on Tuesday, Precursor President Scott Cleland released a 35-page white paper detailing why the deal should be blocked by the FTC he wrote:
“(the deal) would lessen competition and harm consumers, advertisers and content providers” and give the combined entity the opportunity and incentive to “corner” the online advertising market by dominating all three sides: users, content providers and advertisers.”
The white paper goes on to compare the Google/DoubleClick level to one single financial services company owning the top 15 Wall Street banks/asset managers; 60% of the hedge fund and private equity industries; The New York and London stock exchanges; data providers Bloomberg and Factset; credit profile providers Experian and Equifax; and 60% of the Federal Reserve’s and U.S. Census Bureau’s raw market and consumer data.
Whatever the outcome, this is sure to be one of the biggest battle Google had to fight since its inception.
(No Ratings Yet) 
Loading ...
