Google will 'fight' for AdMob: Schmidt
Google is prepared to "fight" if US regulators seek to block the Internet giant's purchase of mobile telephone advertising company AdMob, chief executive Eric Schmidt said Thursday.
"We always believed that this is an acquisition that should go through and if it doesn't go through, we'll fight about it," the Google CEO said in an interview with the CNBC television channel.
The US Federal Trade Commission is examining Google's 750-million-dollar purchase of AdMob on anti-trust grounds and is expected to rule shortly.
Schmidt said Google, which bought AdMob in November, sees the mobile advertising space as a "hugely competitive market."
"You have Apple's proprietary product," he said. "Plus five or six companies that are all competing for parts of that mobile ad platform, not only on the iPhone but on Android phones and other devices as well."
"We'll see what the rulings are, but we feel very strongly about the nature of the competitiveness of the industry, the level of innovation," Schmidt said. "We don't think the government should prejudge that."
Two consumer groups, Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Digital Democracy, urged the FTC in December to block the takeover on anti-trust grounds and said the deal also raises privacy concerns.
Google, which has previously drawn scrutiny from US antitrust regulators, hopes AdMob will help it more effectively extend its lucrative Internet advertising domain into the booming world of mobile devices.
Last year, Google was forced to revise its legal settlement with authors and publishers over its digital book-scanning project amid objections from the US Justice Department.
Google was also forced to abandon a proposed advertising agreement with Yahoo! amid Justice Department anti-trust concerns.
AdMob was founded in 2006 by Omar Hamoui as a California technology startup focused on building tools that let Web advertisers follow potential customers onto mobile devices.
Apple, which bought AdMob rival Quattro Wireless in January, unveiled a new mobile ad platform last month called "iAd" which allows software developers or advertising agencies to embed ads directly into applications being offered for the iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPad.
(c) 2010 AFP
