The FTC today cleared Google’s acquisition of AdMob – a good decision – stating that “the Commission voted unanimously to close its investigation of Google’s acquisition of AdMob because it lacked reason to believe that the transaction would likely result in a substantial lessening of competition, especially in light of marketplace developments that occurred during the course of its investigation….In any nascent market there will be uncertainty about the path of competition and the durability of early leads in market share.” This is the difficulty of applying the merger guidelines in such markets. It’s good that the Commission came to this decision and did so unanimously. To the extent that this sends a signal to other start-ups in similar situations, it is a pro-innovation signal, as I discussed in an earlier piece.
Thomas Lenard is Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Technology Policy Institute. Lenard is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles on telecommunications, electricity, antitrust, privacy, e-commerce and other regulatory issues. His publications include Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated?; The Digital Economy Fact Book; Privacy and the Commercial Use of Personal Information; Competition, Innovation and the Microsoft Monopoly: Antitrust in the Digital Marketplace; and Deregulating Electricity: The Federal Role.
Before joining the Technology Policy Institute, Lenard was acting president, senior vice president for research and senior fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. He has served in senior economics positions at the Office of Management and Budget, the Federal Trade Commission and the Council on Wage and Price Stability, and was a member of the economics faculty at the University of California, Davis. He is a past president and chairman of the board of the National Economists Club.
Lenard is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and holds a PhD in economics from Brown University. He can be reached at [email protected]
