Google autorisé à acheter DoubleClick

Après le feuilleton entre Google et les autorités européennes, le rachat de DoubleClick a été validé et aussitôt officialisé par Eric Schmidt sur le blog de Google.

Voici les conclusions de la commission de l’Europe qui a analysé le deal Google-DoubleClick :

The Commission’s in-depth market investigation found that Google and DoubleClick were not exerting major competitive constraints on each other’s activities and could, therefore, not be considered as competitors at the moment. Even if DoubleClick could become an effective competitor in online intermediation services, it is likely that other competitors would continue to exert sufficient competitive pressure after the merger. The Commission therefore concluded that the elimination of DoubleClick as a potential competitor would not have an adverse impact on competition in the online intermediation advertising services market.

The Commission also analysed the potential effects of non-horizontal relationships between Google and DoubleClick following concerns raised by third parties in the course of the market investigation. These relationships concern DoubleClick’s market position in ad serving, where Google, by controlling DoubleClick’s tools, could allegedly raise the cost of ad serving for rival intermediaries, and Google’s market position in search advertising and/or online ad intermediation services, where Google could allegedly have required purchasers of search ad space or intermediation to also purchase DoubleClick’s tools.

The Commission found that the merged entity would not have the ability to engage in strategies aimed at marginalising Google’s competitors, mainly because of the presence of credible ad serving alternatives to which customers (publishers/advertisers/ad networks) can switch, in particular vertically integrated companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL. The market investigation also found that the merged entity would not have the incentive to close off access for competitors in the ad serving market, mainly because such strategies would be unlikely to be profitable.

A la lecture du communiqué du CEO de Google ce sont les salariés de DoubleClick qui vont être contents car certains têtes vont sauter :

As with most mergers, there may be reductions in headcount. We expect these to take place in the U.S. and possibly in other regions as well. We know that DoubleClick is built on the strength of its people. For this reason we’ll strive to minimize the impact of this process on all of our clients and employees.

Bref, un vrai géant de la publicité online vient de naitre officiellement aujourd’hui, reste à savoir comment les autres vont ils survivre même si l’Europe ne semble pas identifier cela comme une position anti-concurrentielle.