(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
The European Commission (EC) announced on 11 March 2008 that it has cleared the Google-DoubleClick deal after its investigation made according with the EU Merger Regulation.
The decision of the EC considered that "found that Google and DoubleClick were not exerting major competitive constraints on each other's activities and could, therefore, not be considered as competitors at the moment. Even if DoubleClick could become an effective competitor in online intermediation services, it is likely that other competitors would continue to exert sufficient competitive pressure after the merger. The Commission therefore concluded that the elimination of DoubleClick as a potential competitor would not have an adverse impact on competition in the online intermediation advertising services market."
Also the Commission found out that the Microsoft complaints were not correct and took the presence of the company on the market as a sign that the new entity "would not have the ability to engage in strategies aimed at marginalising Google's competitors, mainly because of the presence of credible ad serving alternatives to which customers (publishers/advertisers/ad networks) can switch, in particular vertically integrated companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL."
The EC makes it clear that the decision did not took into consideration the complaints related to EU privacy and personal data legislation, such as the one submitted by Privacy International. Also the consumer issues created by the merger - such as behaviour profiling, as pointed by BEUC, were not present in the Commission decision.
Mergers: Commission clears proposed acquisition of DoubleClick by Google
(11.03.2008)
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/426&...
Google wins Commission approval, closes DoubleClick deal (11.03.2008)
http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=8931
EDRI-gram: EDRI supports PI's comments on Google-Doubleclick merger
(7.11.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.21/google-doubleclick-pi-edri