Australia OKs Google's DoubleClick buy

SYDNEY, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Australia's antitrust regulator said Tuesday it supported Google Inc.'s proposed $3.1 billion purchase of online ad-serving firm DoubleClick Inc.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it had no domestic competition concerns about the deal.

"In this context, the ACCC considered that the merger was unlikely to result in a substantial lessening of competition in an Australian market," the commission said.

A Google representative said the Mountain View, Calif., Internet search and online advertising company was pleased the commission saw "online advertising is a highly competitive and dynamic field in which DoubleClick and Google provide different services."

DoubleClick's technology places ads on Web sites, counts them, chooses the ads that will make a Web site or advertiser the most money and monitors progress of different advertising campaigns.

The company has also been linked to "spyware" because its Internet browser cookies record what ads users view and select while on Web sites.

New York's DoubleClick -- whose customers include Time Warner Inc.'s AOL and News Corp.'s social-networking site MySpace -- says its ad-serving tags are different from spyware.

DoubleClick introduced a Nasdaq-like exchange this year for online ads that Chief Executive David Rosenblatt said would probably become DoubleClick's chief money maker within five years.