“The clearance also increased the likelihood that a future acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft would also pass regulatory scrutiny, since Google would loom as a more formidable force in online advertising markets, according to analysts and critics of the deal,” the Financial Times stated in an article Tuesday.

Google executives announced at a press event in New York that the search giant's ownership of DoubleClick would boost its display side of online ads, in which it is still behind Yahoo, MSN and others, Mediaweek reported.

Before the Google-Doubleclick deal, Google had not ventured too far in the display advertising realm, because Google has not “offered third party ad serving – DoubleClick's core offering,” according to Mediaweek.

Neelie Kroes, the European competition commissioner, said the deal would be investigated on antitrust grounds only, despite critics' efforts to bring up privacy issues, due to Google's “ability to combine its own data about an individual’s Internet search requests with data collected by DoubleClick about the Web sites that person visits,” the Financial Times reported.

Amid debate over privacy issues last year, Google said it was looking at possible changes to DoubleClick's data collection practices to lessen privacy risks. Following regulatory approval, however, no mention of safeguards was made by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, according to the Financial Times.

The display market is expected to grow from $17 billion in 2007 to $28.6 billion by 2010, according to JP Morgan Analyst Imran Khan, the Financial Times reported.