Google bid - 'not a privacy issue'

15th October 2007

The European commission will not look at privacy issues in its review of Google's purchase of advertising group DoubleClick, but will instead focus solely on competition.

Google bought the advertising company in April 2007 for $3.1 billion (£1.5 billion). However, rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft opposed the deal saying that the sharing of user information between the two companies would flout privacy and competition laws.

The commission will decide at the end of October whether it intends to launch a three-month inquiry.

Neelie Kroes, EU competition commissioner, said: "We are looking at the influence on competition and that's it."

According to Bloomberg, the purchase of DoubleClick could also face an antitrust probe by US regulators after rivals expressed competition concerns that the deal will raise advertising prices.

Google is currently the world's leading search engine, performing 60 per cent of all searches worldwide during August, according to a recent survey by comScore.