Without a statement of concerns being sent to Google and DoubleClick eight weeks ahead of an April 2nd deadline for review, it appears unlikely the deal will suffer any delays to satisfy competition officials.
A Bloomberg report out of the land of Poirot and chocolate said three sources claim Google has not received a missive that would delay the merger until certain conditions receive satisfaction.
Even though European Commission spokespeople were not commenting, an uncommonly loquacious Googler in London dropped this on Bloomberg:
"This is still an ongoing investigation, but we don't believe the transaction raises any competition concerns," Ben Novick, a Google spokesman in London, said yesterday. "We hope that the EC will come to the same conclusion as the FTC and will clear the deal without any conditions."
If privacy and competitive concerns expressed to date have not made an impact on the EC, it's difficult to think anything else will going forward. We also think the Microsoft-Yahoo deal will bolster Google's argument that they need DoubleClick's display ads to complement the contextual business they have today.
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