By Steve Lohr, New York Times
Google owns the world’s leading search engine, it operates the largest video-hosting service in YouTube, and its popular web browser, email, map and meeting software is used by billions of people.
But its financial heft — the source of nearly all its enormous profits — is advertising. And perhaps no day was more pivotal in transforming Google into a powerhouse across the entire digital advertising industry than April 13, 2007, when the company clinched a deal to buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.
The deal turned out to be “a total game changer, a crucial piece in the larger jigsaw puzzle Google put together,” said Timothy Armstrong, a former Google executive who championed the acquisition.
It has also turned out to be a classic example of why a growing number of antitrust experts say lawmakers need to broadly rethink how mergers are regulated when the buyer is a tech company with strong and growing market power.
