Scott Cleland of The Precursor Group has released a 35 page report dealing with the proposed Google/DoubleClick merger now being considered by the FTC. In the report, which some are already criticizing, Cleland lays out the grounds under which he suspects the FTC will block the merger:

To equal Google-DoubleClick’s level of market concentration in the intermediary online advertising market, one single financial services company would have to own:

• The top 15 Wall Street banks/asset managers;
• ~60% of the hedge fund and private equity industries;
• The New York and London Stock Exchanges;
• The two leading providers of financial analytical tools: Bloomberg and Factset;
• Two of the three national providers of credit profiles: Experian and Equifax; and
• ~60% of the Federal Reserve’s and U.S. Census Bureau’s raw market and consumer data.

Cleland does offer some compelling arguments. If the FTC is looking at the merger from a similar line of thinking a block could likely occur. But as Duncan Riley at TechCrunch points out, the FTC has taken a more hands-off approach to acquisition decisions in the recent past.

Personally… I can see this go either way. But if I had to make a guess, I’d say Google will get the green light.

Yahoo! and Microsoft, which both found themselves under FTC scrutiny for similar acquisitions, were recently cleared to proceed with their respective mergers. Granted, neither Yahoo! nor Microsoft command as much market share as Google (even when combined). So this is a little bit different.

What do you think? Will Google get the go-ahead from the FTC? Or is Cleland right? He was right when he said the FTC would block the WorldCom/Sprint merger - even when the rest of the industry thought it would go through.

History can repeat itself in two ways here:

1. Google will be cleared, just as Microsoft and Yahoo! were
2. Cleland will turn out to be right with his analysis, despite industry speculation to the contrary

How do you think it will turn out? How would you like it turn out?