FTC Announces Not to Block Google's Buyout of DoubleClick

Today the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, announced that they will not block Google Inc.'s proposition to buy DoubleClick Inc., which ends an eight-month long investigation. Google's $3.1 billion proposal for acquisition of DoubleClick passed the FTC with a 4-1 vote.

According to the release, there were concerns on how this transaction might affect consumer privacy, but the FTC determined that those concerns are "not unique to Google and DoubleClick." The Commissioners also said that "the sole purpose of federal antitrust review of mergers and acquisitions is to identify and remedy transactions that harm competition," and so the FTC does not have legal authority required to block this transaction.

The agency also looked at how this merger will be implemented into the ad serving markets to make sure that there is no elimination of beneficial competition. They determined that the competition in the advertising market is vigorous, and that this competition will likely increase. Therefore, no antitrust concerns were raised on this issue.

The FTC statement ended saying, "The markets within the online advertising space continue to quickly evolve, and predicting their future course is not a simple task. Accounting for the dynamic nature of an industry requires solid grounding in facts and the careful application of tested antitrust analysis. Because the evidence did not support the theories of potential competitive harm, there was no basis on which to seek to impose conditions on this merger. We want to be clear, however, that we will closely watch these markets and, should Google engage in unlawful tying or other anticompetitive conduct, the Commission intends to act quickly."