The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is leaning toward filing an antitrust suit that would challenge Google’s buyout of AdMob, reports Bloomberg.
The news comes from three anonymous sources that are familiar with the issue. A five-member commission will decide whether to approve the deal or not.
AdMob is a seller of advertisements for mobile platforms. The firm was a source of contention between Apple and Google before the latter made the winning bid to buy AdMob.
Those opposed to the deal say that it would give Google an unfair advantage in the mobile ad market. In 2009, the two firms accounted for 21 percent of mobile ads in the U.S. Some advertisers think that Google would raise ad rates if the acquisition went through.
"We want it to be competitive," Simon Buckingham, CEO of New York-based software company Appitalism, told Bloomberg. "I’m not going to have any choices if the purchase goes through."
Google has had a number of suits brought against it this year – earlier this week, a suit filed against it by Rosetta Stone was dismissed. According to Reuters, Rosetta Stone claimed that Google allowed knock-off and imitation software distributors to abuse search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to steal sales from them.
