Here’s another sign that winning approval for Google’s purchase of mobile advertising company AdMob isn’t turning out to be plain sailing in Washington: Senator Herb Kohl, chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust sub-committee, has just written to the Federal Trade Commission urging it to take a long, hard look at the deal.
It’s worth noting Kohl’s close ties to Jon Leibowitz, the FTC chairman. Leibowitz was a long-time staffer for Kohl, having served as his chief counsel for 12 years up to 2000. And while Kohl doesn’t come right out and say the AdMob deal should be blocked, he doesn’t stop far short.
As we reported last month, the FTC’s staff has already been preparing a case to challenge the AdMob deal, though it has not yet got as far as recommending that course of action to the agency’s commissioners. So Kohl’s admonition looks like a timely nudge to those same commissioners not to just wave this one through.
Having put the cases for and against the deal, he writes:
It is therefore of vital importance to be wary of any transaction that would create undue market dominance of search or application-based advertising on mobile devices such as smart phones. Allowing any one firm to dominate this market could result in higher prices for mobile advertising on the Internet and with respect to smart phone applications, and also could result in lower revenues realized by applications developers. Without reaching any conclusion as to whether the Google/AdMob transaction would create such dominance or would cause any substantial harm to competition, I believe it is essential that the FTC scrutinize this deal very closely to carefully examine this question.
And, in a nod to the privacy concerns that others have also raised:
The FTC should also pay close attention to the privacy interests implicated by this transaction, as the combined firm will gain access to a treasure trove of data on millions of consumers’ behavior, search and product preferences. The FTC should assure itself that the deal, if approved, will have sufficient safeguards to protect consumers’ privacy.
