Google Gets FTC Thumbs Up on Deal to Acquire DoubleClick

The Wall Street Journal today reported that the FTC Clears Google-DoubleClick Deal putting a fork in Microsoft's and AT&T's plans for stopping the deal.  Their claims of it being anti-competitive were ludicrous and from impacting consumer privacy, that was a red herring too.  The deal itself does none of those and as I wrote before, it solves a lot of problems.  Here's why...

• From a privacy perspective if you were already worried about it, it really doesn't cause extra pressure.  DoubleClick has been tracking you FOR YEARS, just look at your cookies.
• All those free things you signed up with at Google because they are cool?  Well, you "paid" for access to those with giving up a piece of your privacy.  Putting it together doesn't impact you that much more, because with Google AdSense, Google sees you on about 74% of the internet anyway.  That's more than enough data to build profiles on you.
• While Google is an up and coming competitor and modeler of click stream and web surfing behavior, I personally believe that Yahoo is the market leader in building profiles.  They have been crunching terabytes of data for years.  Based on my own experience they are the best at building response and cloning models, beaconing users, re-marketing, and building behavioral models.  Plus, they just adding Blue Lithium
• Speaking of Behavioral Targeting, where do you think companies like Tacoda (now owned by AOL) and RevenueScience get their data from?
• Finally, I think Microsoft having access to the data they receive from Atlas scares me more than Google and DoubleClick.  Microsoft has access to millions and millions of PCs and Laptops worldwide with countless personal information, files, pictures and that worries me more than some anonymous cookies.

Being anti-competitive is really even funnier.  The ad serving business has hit rock bottom when it comes to prices and differentiation.  Personally, I've canceled 2 deals with DoubleClick over the years mostly due to poor customer service.  DoubleClick is still around as is Atlas so there are plenty of choices.  Microsoft's argument probably assumes that putting an AdWords campaign with a DoubleClick banner buy makes it too convenient for advertisers.  Sadly they are correct. 

Google has a ton of business because a) their search is perceived to be better than MSN b) Microsoft watched Google grow up and ignored the internet c) Google makes it too easy for advertisers to use them d) they provide good prices and free tracking.  Google shouldn't be penalized for providing a better service when there are plenty of choices out there; plus they'll have their work ahead of them whipping the DoubleClick team into shape.

The deal helps advertisers by integrating platforms and doesn't add to consumer privacy woes.  I'm going to stick with Atlas for a while and may give DoubleClick a look when I start seeing them integrated more with Google.  The FTC made the right choice....

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

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