The EU has granted "unconditional approval" to the Google DoubleClick merger.
No surprise here. More noteworthy, however, was the Commission's statement that "privacy considerations are outside the scope of its authority over mergers." (This is in essence what the FTC said as well.) Beyond the approval, this abdication of jurisdiction is a major setback for privacy advocates who had been relying on these bodies to acknowledge what they see as a compelling connection between privacy and anti-trust. They will now have to take a different tack and seek other alliances within the U.S. Congress and European Parliament.
This is a good time for advocates on both sides of the issue to take a step back and review their strategies in light of government's likely diminished role in resolving these debates through new legislation. A deteriorating economy will favor the self-regulation position of industry lobbyists, because: 1) U.S. voters have other things on their minds; and 2) legislators are likely to take a strong "do no harm to the economy" approach when considering new privacy regulations. For both privacy advocates and industry leaders, this is likely to lead to a renewed focus on the grassroots battleground of popular opinion.
Public opinion has been volatile on this issue, and it seems for the moment to have adopted a "don't make it obvious" position where tolerance is the general rule, but outrage erupts when tactics become visible, as in the Facebook Beacon case. There has also been much made of the gap between digital natives (young social network denizens) and digital immigrants (enthusiastic but suspicious baby boomers) on privacy issues. In a signal that the mainstream press may have something to say to the digital immigrants about this, The New York Times recently noted: "Traditional media companies, which collect far less data about visitors to their sites, are increasingly at a disadvantage when they compete for ad dollars."
As we've noted in the past, mainstream media and privacy advocates may find some alignment in promoting greater public concern over privacy. The lingering challenge for them will be to better articulate the threat and the remedy in language consumers can relate to. For the industry, and the newlywed Google and DoubleClick entity in particular, the counterchallenge will be to pursue an aggressive agenda of more control and transparency around data collection practices while continuing to grow their businesses.
Is it really worth the price? Better targeted ads are great, but the cost is our personal information being gathered for better ads. Let's face it, we are not talking world peace.
