Government Seeks More Information on Google’s Admeld Acquisition

The Justice Department has asked Google for more information and time as it investigates the search giant’s $400 million acquisition of Admeld, a display advertising company, Google said. The second request “doesn't surprise us, as today’s display advertising industry is very new and highly complex,” Neal Mohan, Google’s vice president of display advertising, wrote in a blog post. “But we'll work to enable this review to be concluded as quickly as possible.” Mohan argued that publishers and advertisers had many options for buying and selling display ads, including three that were new in the last month. In addition to start-ups, Google also competes with big companies like Yahoo and Microsoft in display advertising.