• Associated Press, Monday, July 9, 2007 12:53 PM

In an SEC filing on Friday, aQuantive Inc. said it had cleared a major regulatory hurdle in its bid to be acquired by Microsoft Corp. for $6 billion. It passed the Federal Trade Commission's waiting period to review anticompetitive fallout from mergers and acquisitions without a request for further information. By contrast, the government organization a few weeks ago solicited further information from Microsoft rival Google over its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick.

Now, shareholders will vote on August 9 on whether to sell the company to Microsoft for $6 billion. At that kind of premium, the vote is surely a formality. Meanwhile, aQuantive spokesperson Tom Phillips said the company is currently reviewing how the organization, which includes the marketing services firm Avenue A/Razorfish and ad-serving giant Atlas, would look after the buyout.

Search is the main area where Microsoft lags behind Google; aQuantive's ad-serving technology could help the software giant close the gap by making more per search, although it will take a while to sync aQuantive's technology with Microsoft's adCenter, a so-called "total advertising solution" that has thus far proved to be rather bulky for Microsoft and its advertisers.

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