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 WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Trade Commission will likely consider the privacy issues raised by Google Inc.'s proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. as part of its antitrust review of the transaction, analysts said Tuesday.
Antitrust reviews generally focus on monopoly concerns, such as whether the combined company will be able to raise prices without fear of competition. But there is precedent for them to address privacy worries, analysts said.
Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit advocacy group, said "the FTC has looked at consumer protection concerns in the context of a merger," citing the 2001 combination of AOL and Time Warner. In that deal, regulators focused on opening Time Warner's cable systems to competing broadband Internet providers, among other conditions.
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