Attorney: FTC May Thwart Google’s DoubleClick Buy

October 1st, 2007

Google argued its privacy and competition case before regulators on Thursday. The search king hopes to convince the government its pending $3.1 billion purchase of online advertising firm DoubleClick won’t harm consumer interests.Microsoft put in its two cents to persuade regulators to put the kibosh on the deal. The software giant argued that the Internet’s very future is at stake. Microsoft claims that approving the deal would open the door for Google to collect “the largest database of user information the world has ever known.”

Thursday’s hearings mark the rival firms’ first public debate on the issue, though the drama has been playing out in the media for many months. Google and Microsoft executives might have been sitting together at the same Senate hearing, but their stances on the pending deal were anything but similar. The companies argued for about 90 minutes.

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