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"Rumor has it that Google may get the best Christmas present evar.  Bloomberg  is reporting that contacts close to the Google-DoubleClick acquisition are reporting that the $3.1 billion purchase will be cleared by U.S. antitrust enforcers, possibly by the end of the week.  After a very long battle that got several major players involved, sparked an all out ad-network acquisition flurry, and has been looking more and more dismal  by the month, Google may very well come out on top.  \nShortly after announcing its plans to acquire DoubleClick, Microsoft  headed up a campaign to stop the acquisition all together, stating that Google would in fact become a monopoly in the online ad industry should the two companies combine their search and display ads.  AT&amp;T opposed the acquisition as well, for similar reasons.  What Google was left with was a long journey that put them up against antitrust organizations around the world.  The European Union has been less supportive of the acquisition, and Google must still receive an official approval from them.  The EU has confirmed that it will  rule on the transaction by April 2, after an extension  was granted.  \nGoogle has made every effort to make the acquisition look attractive in the eyes of antitrust enforcers and privacy advocates, working on global efforts to create standards  in regards to privacy rules in how collected data is utilized, as well as proposing a \"crumbled cookie\" effect should the antitrust enforcers allow the acquisition to go through.  More recently, Google has faced even more flack, from delays  in relation to political angst, malware   and purported conflicts of interest.  \nWith Microsoft, AOL  and Yahoo  having snatched up their own advertising companies with seemingly no problems, the battle was in fact on its way to becoming far more interesting than we could have ever imagined, given the potential of the other larger companies to take advantage of Google's dire situation.  However, today's announced rumor could really change everything.  Get ready, world."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2007/12/19/google-doubleclick-clear/>