Microsoft plays injured competitor role
Microsoft yesterday told a Senate committee hearing that Google’s proposed takeover of DoubleClick will give it a near complete monopoly control of the online advertising market
A few senators attended the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, which was chaired by Senator Herb Kohl, a democrat from Wisconsin.
"This merger will undoubtedly result in higher profits for the operator of the dominant advertising pipeline, but it will be bad for everyone else," Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel for Microsoft, told the Senate panel. "It will be bad for publishers, bad for advertisers and, most importantly, bad for consumers."
The deal will see Google takeover DoubleClick for around $3.1 billion. Google is a leading purveyor of text based ads, such as paid search and organic search, while DoubleClick’s strength is in providing tools to serve display or graphical ads.
Scott Cleland, a telecommunications analyst and chairman of Netcompetition.org, told the commission that the merger would leave little market share for Google’s competitors.
"What do people want when they buy ads? They want audience. Google is 65 percent of the internet view share. They would get 25 per cent of the share they don’t have."
