Will Google's deal with Admob invite antitrust concerns?

November 9, 2009 | Paul Boutin

Google 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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