Will Google’s deal with Admob invite antitrust concerns?

November 9, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments | |

Batman-Robin-Photograph-C12150175Google announced its acquisition of mobile display-ad company AdMob today. It feels a bit like a replay of Google’s 2008 acquisition of online ad company DoubleClick. The question is, will the Department of Justice’s eager anti-trust crime fighters scrutinize this deal to the extent it did the DoubleClick deal? Google has said it expects the deal to close in the next few months. And while it said it doesn’t anticipate any regulatory concerns, it also said it wouldn’t be surprised if there was some regulatory review.

Blogger Scott Cleland is a little less optimistic that Google will close the deal quite so easily. Among his arguments:

* AdMob is the equivalent of a “Mobile-DoubleClick,” and the FTC took several months to review that deal closely. When the FTC approved that deal 4-1, they assumed Yahoo would remain a strong competitor, which was proven dead wrong when the DOJ, eleven months later, had to intervene and block Google’s anti-competitive proposed Ad Agreement with Yahoo.

* The antitrust concern [in the acquisition of AdMob] would be that Google’s acquisition of AdMob would lessen competition by accelerating Google’s growth and emerging dominance of the mobile search market where NetMarketShare.com’s latest survey of mobile search engine market shares has Google Global with 97.50% share.

For plenty more reasons Cleland’s sure this latest acquisition isn’t in for smooth sailing, check out his full post.

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About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • fdfadd
    They pay you to write this ?
  • ifij775
    Anti-trust legislation is non-objective, arbitrary law based on bureaucrats whims.
  • Is this really one for the regulators? AdMob is a significant player, but it’s certainly not dominant (no one really knows if it is the biggest as no network publishes revenues). This is still a very fragmented market. We know of 20 or so mobile ad networks, that means there are probably lots more. Judge it for yourself: the leading networks – including AdMob are all profiled, with all available stats, in this guide: http://www.mobithinking.com/mobile-ad-network-g...