FTC Clears Google's DoubleClick Purchase

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cleared Google's $3.1 billion acquisition of online advertiser DoubleClick on Thursday, concluding after an investigation that the merger posed no substantial threat to competition in online marketing. Google still must satisfy the concerns of European Union antitrust officials, whose review deadline is April 2.

The commission ruled 4-to-1 in favor of the Google deal, with Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour as the sole dissenter. "I dissent because I make alternate predictions about where this market is heading, and the transformative role the combined Google/DoubleClick will play if the proposed acquisition is consummated," she wrote in a statement after the ruling.

Others, including the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), are voicing Harbour's concerns. CDD executive director Jeff Chester called the decision a "lack of leadership" on the part of the FTC and said the FTC was "sidestepping" its responsibility to protect consumer privacy.

"With today's decision, the FTC is helping ensure that U.S. consumers will have to live under the shadow of an even bigger digital giant, with a privacy time bomb ticking in the background," Chester said in a statement. "By permitting Google to combine the personal details, gleaned from our searches online and YouTube downloads, with the vast repository of information collected by DoubleClick, the FTC has sanctioned the creation of a new digital data colossus."

Critics of the deal also complain it gives Google dominating power in both ad sales and ad serving tools. The FTC found the argument less than convincing, pointing out a series of acquisitions—including Microsoft's purchase of DoubleClick rival aQuantive, among others—has kept competition healthy in those two markets.

Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, said he strongly disagrees with that assessment. "I don't think you can compare Microsoft's purchase to Google's," he said. "If you look at the difference between Microsoft and Google's position in the search space, there's no contest. It's really making the biggest far bigger." To de-link privacy from the merger, he said, is misguided.

Turow also lamented the FTC's decision to separately address privacy issues and antitrust issues, which the commission said it could not link together. "You can't distinguish between the digital advertising market and the market for information about Americans," he said. "You cannot be a competitor in the digital marketing space without dealing with issues of privacy that may intrude on the privacy of Americans."

The general population, he said, often does not understand how privacy policies work, which complicates the ruling further. "People have no idea about how information gets manipulated and stored and shared behind the screen," he said. "The whole concept of data mining is alien to Americans." The public's misunderstanding of Google's business model is also important to keep in mind, he said. "Google says its business is organizing the world's info—that's just not true," he argues. "Their model is creating an advertising serving model that will trump all media companies."

He blames the FTC for not being "creative enough" when considering the digital future and the implications that will have for privacy. "They will know more about Americans than anybody. That's their business model, and nobody talks about it," he said. "The rhetoric of the web -- of business in general -- is 'trust us.' And it's very difficult to figure out how not to."

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