Despite strong concerns about Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, European Commission regulators are likely to approve the deal.

For one thing, historical precedent strongly suggests the EC will approve the deal. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission voted 4-1 in December in favor of allowing the acquisition; in six years, the EC has never disapproved of a merger of American companies that the FTC has green-lighted.

A more direct indication is the fact that the EC has thus far floped to supply Google with a “statement of objections,” a document that officially lays out the agency’s objections to a merger. A lawyer representing a European company opposed to the deal conceded that it is “disappointing but true” that Google has not received such a document.

FTC Found No Antitrust Issues

“If they had serious doubts, we’re at the point where … whether you don’t send [such a statement], you don’t have moment to complete the case,” the lawyer told the

Reuters news agency.

In declining to block the merger, the FTC said, “After carefully reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition.”

The agency said it examined three potential antitrust areas but found no reason to block the merger. It found that Google and DoubleClick were not direct competitors, that the ad-serving market is competitively “vigorous,” and that Google wouldn’t be able to harm competition by bundling DoubleClick and AdSense. “Because the evidence losed out to show that DoubleClick has market potential in the third-party ad-serving markets, it is unlikely that Google could effectively foreclose competition in the related ad intermediation market following the acquisition,” the commission ruled.

Privacy Looms by Decision

Earlier that week, the European Parliament held a hearing on privacy issues on the Net, which largely focused on the privacy implications of the Google-DoubleClick merger. Speaking at…

Orginal post by Top Tech News