Former Anti-Trust Targets Microsoft And AT&T Raise Trust Worries Over Google-DoubleClick Deal

Apr 17, 2007 at 8:51am ET by Barry Schwartz

Microsoft and AT&T, both of which have been subject to anti-trust actions in the past, are raising concerns that the combination of Google and DoubleClick might create a company that is too powerful.

Google’s Rivals Fear DoubleClick Deal Concentrates Too Much Web-Ad Clout from the Wall Street Journal explains that joining Microsoft and AT&T are companies like Time Warner Inc. and other “large Internet and media companies” expressing concern and placing pressure on regulators to review the Google and DoubleClick deal.

The Wall Street Journal nicely summarizes the concerns:

At issue, said executives at the companies critical of the deal, is that Google already controls the lion’s share of the market for Internet-search advertising and related contextual ads; the DoubleClick deal would make it a dominant player in the market for serving graphical ads on Web sites on behalf of the sites’ publishers.

Microsoft Urges Review of Google-DoubleClick Deal from the New York Times quotes Microsoft’s general counsel as saying the deal between Google and DoubleClick will “substantially reduce competition in the advertising market on the Web.” Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said “we’ve studied this closely, and their claims, as stated, are not true.”

PaidContent.org has a nice review of the reports out there and for more coverage see Techmeme.com.

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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