Is there any richer irony than this? Two companies that were convicted of abusing monopoly power complaining about Google gaining too much market power! From tomorrow’s WSJ:
“Google’s purchase of DoubleClick combines the two largest providers of online advertising delivery and is going to reduce substantially the market competition on which Web sites rely on to provide advertising,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel. He said that, taken together, Google and DoubleClick would handle more than 80% of the advertisements served up to third-party Web sites when a user pulls up a page.
Comeuppance is a bitter pill to swallow, ain’t it, bitch?
AT&T said it had concerns about antitrust issues with the Google-DoubleClick deal. “We think it’s real important that the antitrust authorities take a real hard look at whether or not this gives Google not only market power but enhances market power they already have,” said Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs. Google, he said, “seems to be positioning itself very intentionally in the dominant or controlling position in being the single broker of advertising on the Internet.”
Gee, I am sure the one thing that the telcos love more than anything is unfettered competition.
