Battelle Chats With Microsoft’s General Counsel On Google/DoubleClick Antitrust Allegations

Apr 20, 2007 at 3:25pm ET by Barry Schwartz

News Analysis: Microsoft General Counsel on DoubleClick and Antitrust from John Battelle documents some of his conversation with Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith today.

In this conversation, John asks why Microsoft is encouraging the FTC to look into anti-trust issues with the Google & DoubleClick acquisition. Smith explained that the purchase of DoubleClick is a sign of Google wanting to control more of the market.

While Eric Schmidt of Google feels owning DoubleClick is a tiny percent of the overall advertising world, Microsoft feels otherwise. John highlights especially that the issue might hinge on whether the deal is measured against all advertising or only online advertising.

The article dives deeper into how and why a trust action might get assessed. It also touches on John reporting that Microsoft was willing to pay more than Google for DoubleClick but that the private equity firm with a majority of DoubleClick’s shares was unwilling to sell to the company.

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Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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ONE COMMENT ON Battelle Chats With Microsoft’s General Counsel On Google/DoubleClick Antitrust Allegations

Lucky Lester, April 23rd, 2007 at 1:34 pm ET:

I wonder if that private equity firm felt they were going with the lesser of two evils!

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