Comments on: EU extends review of Google-DoubleClick merger

European Commission's decision to take a deeper look at the proposed merger potentially puts the $3.1 billion deal at risk.

[inachu]

This is very bad.

I can see google secretly installing software with shady unethical legal agreements.

EXAMPLE:


By using google.com you agree to accept and have software downloaded to be installed on your pc.
You agree not to modify or reverse engineer our software that records your website visits and keyword keystrokes.

[stlwest]

Google is becoming too sales driven....you think?

It seems that when I want to find out information about something that Google seems to return results mostly trying to sell me something. I thought that was what froogle.com was for.....

I was trying to find out what SAS dual port drives were all about but Google just returned a bunch of links to people wanting to sell drives. I used Ask.com and was able to find a paper on the technology from Hitachi.

Yes Google is making lots of money selling link position and click throughs but as it stops functioning as a true search engine and just return links to stores it will quickly become my second search engine.

[john55440]

Bad news for Big Brother Google is good news for consumers -nt

no text

[tcardone05]

EU is stoopid.

EU hatin on another American sucess story. What else is new. Is there a money amount that they go after? Microsoft first, now Google? Why does the EU intervene on every big US corp?

[partytildawn-20159620461052270]

American business no business of EU

Since when do the mergers between two US companies require EU approval? If they don't like it, then that's tough. Their economies have been sinking saved only by loans from the US Federal Reserve. If they are gonna stick their noses where they don't belong, then I say let their economies falter.

[irperez]

EU has alot of say

Although these are American companies, if EU does not approve the merger, Google cannot do business with doubleclick in Europe and that would prove very very difficult in the internet age. In the past when EU disapproves the merger but FTC does the merger doesn't go on. If you read articles about this, I don't know people bring this up... It actually makes alot of sense. We live in a global economy now. Not like 50 years ago.

[hawkeyeaz1]

How can EU stop this...

If the US government approves it, how can EU stop it when both companies are US companies? Sure, EU can forbid mixing the data in EU, but they can't block the merger.

[eurobloke]

We have stake in this merger

Some of you are asking why are the Europeans are interested in this merger.

First, Google has a major office in Dublin and sub-offices in other European countries. Plus,both parties have major customers in Europe, Google with their mapping programs and DoubleClick is one of the biggest Internet advertisers, with many customers like the Guardian newspaper.

Secondly, there is a concern over this merger whether it will sifter competition in the on-line advertising business. Unlike America, where there is concern over customers, in Europe there is concern over competitors, and whether it will lead to a distorted playing-field.

If you thought, it was bad against American companies, think over the European companies who were forced to give back billions of euro worth state aid, like France Télécom, Deutsche Telekom, etc.

You have to remember the famous GE-Honeywell merger, which collapsed with millions of euro were spend on lobbyists (Brussels has the second highest number of lobbyists in the world, after Washington DC), meetings with commissioners, talks with Bush to pressure the European Commission to allow to merger etc. Notably, it forced GE to sack Jack Welch, and ruin his second marriage.

On the European have the American debt, yes we have your debt, but you have some of our debt as well. It's a two-way process.