Saturday, April 9, 2011

DOJ Willing To Approve Google?s $700M ITA Deal, With Conditions

Google has just come close to winning approval from the U.S. Justice Department of its $700 million acquisition of travel software company ITA. Google has been embroiled in an investigation by the Justice Department over the search giant's acquisition of the travel software company, which provides a management system for airfare pricing and shopping services. Despite intense scrutiny and opposition from competitors, the deal appears to be on its way to being approved, if Google complies with the DOJ's proposed settlement. Read our coverage here for background on the investigation. This settlement requires that Google develop and license travel software, to establish internal firewall procedures and to continue to fund software research and development in the industry. Interestingly, The DOJ also filed an antitrust lawsuit at the same time they filed a proposed settlement, in case Google doesn't agree to the settlement terms. But according to this Google blog post, the search giant seems to be ready for the acquisition to close. The key takeaway is that if Google doesn't settle, the DOJ says that the acquisition, as originally proposed, is anti-competitive. ed, is anti-competitive.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/LX2-65mmp8c/

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