The last barrier to Google acquiring DoubleClick may be about to fall. Bloomberg and others are reporting that antitrust officials in the European Union “plan to rule that the purchase may proceed without changes” as early as March 11 (about a year after the $3.1 billion deal was first announced). The FTC approved the acquisition here in the U.S. last December, but if there was going to be a stumbling block everyone expected it to be at the EU. If Bloomberg is correct, that stumbling block is about to be removed.
Microsoft won’t be too happy about that. It was lobbying heavily against the deal, both in the U.S. and in Europe. Meanwhile, Redmond has been building its own online advertising business through its aQuantive acquisition. You’ve got to wonder whether Microsoft’s ongoing attempt to buy Yahoo helped convince the EU that online advertising is an extremely competitive industry after all that doesn’t need to be regulated.
Please fix the spelling for Double in the title.
It’s the new, exotic European “DoubelClick”. It’s just missing a diacritic.
bullshit, this has antitrust written all over it
This should not go through!! Google needs to get there wings.
Google needs to get there wings.
I hate to be “that guy”, but you misspelled “DoubelClick” in your blog title, as you know, because you spelled it correctly elsewhere, it should be “DoubleClick”. Sorry, but large font bold typos get under my skin =)
Why are everyone so troubeld about the tiepo? Any longtime reader of this blog noes that grammatical errors and blatant missppellings are quite the norm. Arrington working hard to ensure that editorial integrity haz no place in Web 2.0
Hey Brian, u misspelled “tiepo”. It should be “type-o”.
well played Chris Cardinal… well played, indeed.
OMG, this post and comments are full of hilarious, ironic typos. It’s killing me!
I don’t like how google is acquiring doubleclick, I would rather have many firms competing then just having google and microsoft dueling each other
I hope Google succeed in purchasing DoubleClick.