Russia blocks Google online advertising acquisition

October 24, 2008, 08:16 AM —  IDG News Service — 

Russian regulators will not let Google buy a local online advertising company, halting a $140 million deal agreed to in July.

Google planned to acquire Zao Begun, which has a search and contextual video and text advertising business. Begun is owned by Rambler Media, a Russian company that own various Web sites and runs a search engine.

Google said it is reviewing the decision of Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) and hasn't decided how to react.

"We are very disappointed to hear that FAS has come to this decision," Google said in a statement. "We strongly believe that this acquisition will enable us to significantly improve opportunities for Russian users, advertisers and publishers as well as the entire industry."

Google's plans to grow its online advertising business, which comprises nearly all of the company's revenue, has run into other obstacles with regulators.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating a plan for Yahoo to show Google search ads. That deal formed as Yahoo was under intense pressure earlier this year as Microsoft tried to acquire the company.

Yahoo and Google planned to start the program this month, but it has been delayed pending the DOJ review. Critics say it could drive up the costs of advertising and also gives the two companies too much control over the online advertising market. Google has said ads are purchased by auction, and neither company sets prices.

The rejection of the deal in Russia underscores the difficulty Google is having in some markets. While it dominates search in Western countries, Google faces strong competition from local search engines in places such as South Korea, China and Russia.

Google picked a strong partner in Russia: Begun runs a network with 40,000 advertisers covering 143,000 Russian-language Web sites. When the deal was announced, Rambler also signed an additional agreement to use Google's AdSense technology on its main portal.

Efforts to reach Rambler Media were unsuccessful.

IDG News Service

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Close

On Twitter now

Google

Powered by Twitter
You are logged in | Sign out
Sign in and post to Twitter

What are you thinking?

Cancel Tweet sent

On Twitter now

Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

jfruh
Apple syncing patent can't come soon enough

pasmith
New Twitter features borrow from 3rd party clients

Esther Schindler
Open Source Changes the Software Acquisition Process

mikelgan
How to set up continuous podcast play on the new iTunes

David Strom
Five important Windows 7 mobility features

sjvn
Guard your Wi-Fi for your own sake                        

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Grepping on Whole Words

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace