Google Inc, whose proposed acquisition of DoubleClick Inc is being investigated by US antitrust officials, expects to complete the US$3.1 billion purchase by this year, chairman and chief executive officer Eric Schmidt said.
"We are not concerned" about the US Federal Trade Commission [FTC] probe, Schmidt told reporters at a technology conference in Seoul yesterday. "We're quite convinced that the proposed merger meets all of the appropriate US laws."
Schmidt said that US regulatory approval of his company's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick would not be hindered by possible concerns over privacy.
Last month, Google agreed to buy DoubleClick to boost online advertising sales.
The move prompted companies including Microsoft Corp and AT&T Inc to ask for a review of the purchase, saying it would give Google too much control in the US$28.8 billion global online advertising market.
New York-based DoubleClick helps its customers place and track online advertising, including search ads, which Google -- more than its nearest search competitors Yahoo Inc and Microsoft -- has turned into an extremely lucrative business.
Google confirmed on Tuesday that the FTC was conducting an antitrust review of the deal.
Typically, antitrust reviews focus on monopoly concerns, such as whether the combined company will be able to raise prices without fear of competition. But there is precedent for them to address privacy worries, analysts said.
Schmidt said that Google, when considering the acquisition, "looked very carefully" at privacy and other issues that would come under legal review "because we knew competitors would raise those issues, as indeed they have."
Mountain View, California-based Google yesterday launched a new Korean-language Web site to attract more users and help it compete against bigger rivals in a country where six out of seven homes already have high-speed Internet access, the world's highest proportion.
The launch was announced by Schmidt during a keynote speech to the Seoul Digital Forum.
The new Google Korea search site deviates from its previous version which features just a simple search box, by adding graphics features -- an animated main menu and product buttons -- above and below the box.
Still, Google lags behind South Korea's NHN Corp and Daum Communications Corp in the country's Internet search market.
Schmidt said his company was committed to expanding its presence in South Korea.
"It's obvious to me that Korea is a great laboratory of the digital age," he said in the speech.
On Tuesday, US Internet security start-up firm GreenBorder, which specializes in using "virtualization" to create safe zones for online activities, said it has been bought by Google.
Google confirmed the purchase of GreenBorder, saying the deal was completed in the middle of this month.
"We were impressed by GreenBorder's small team of talented engineers and believe they can help to build products and features that will benefit our users, advertisers and publishers," Google said.
The terms of the deal and Google's specific plans for GreenBorder's technology were not disclosed.
GreenBorder lets computer operators combine hardware and software to create "virtual" machines where tasks such as reading e-mail or exploring Web sites can be done without exposing systems to viruses or other malicious programs.
Web-based programs that try to access files or computer registries are stopped from leaving what are commonly referred to as online "sandboxes" created by GreenBorder.
The virtual "sandboxes" vanish at the end of each session, taking hacker assaults such as spyware, viruses and trojan horses with them.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
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