EU approves Google’s buy of DoubleClick

Google won unconditional approval from the European Commission on Tuesday to buy rival Web advertiser DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, despite objections from rivals and privacy advocates.Google has already won approval from United States antitrust authorities.
“The Commission’s in-depth market investigation found that Google and DoubleClick were not exerting major competitive constraints on each other’s activities and [...]

EU set to clear Google - DoubleClick merger: sources

Google is expected to receive unconditional approval from European Union regulators next week for its $3.1 billion takeover of ad firm DoubleClick, people familiar with the situation said.The approval has long been expected because the European Commission decided in January not to object formally to the transaction. The Commission, the EU’s top competition watchdog, has [...]

EU slaps record fine on Microsoft

The EU has fined Microsoft a record €899 million for antitrust violations, bringing the total fines imposed since 2004 to €1.68 billion. Microsoft has been penalised for failing to meet the European Commission’s requirements for the licensing of protocols that allow third party applications to connect to its own server products.
This fine should be the [...]

IBM’s Cognos acquisition gets EU approval

IBM’s US$5 billion acquisition of business intelligence software vendor Cognos took a step forward on Thursday as European regulators gave their approval to the deal.
After examining the acquisition, the European Commission said in a statement that it “would not give rise to competition [...]