And this is certainly a good time to buy. “To be successful in the long run, Microsoft needs people to green-light the best acquisitions and teams of people with the right skill sets to integrate them,” Jackson writes. “Frankly, Microsoft hasn’t shown it has either of those abilities. Microsoft investors don’t need another expensive aQuantive deal or Facebook investment that smacks of desperation and has questionable long-term value for the company’s shareholders. It needs to take a page out of IBM’s and Oracle’s playbook, though, and start doing deals to grow its top and bottom lines. A big debt issuance, with a skilled acquisition team, and evidence of some exciting growth-related deals could suddenly show the market that this elephant can dance again.”

“The implications of this [deal] for the Internet advertising market–and for the Internet as a whole–are profound and potentially far reaching,” the Senators wrote. “A core part of Google’s business is placing contextual advertising–that is, text-based ads placed on third-party Web sites which are relevant to the content or to the likely reader of the Web site. Google has a dominant market position with respect to the placing of these contextual ads. DoubleClick has a leading market position in placing another form of Internet advertising–display advertising which also resides on third-party Web sites. Industry experts that we spoke to in the course of our inquiry raised serious concerns that combining these two companies’ leading positions in these two forms of Internet advertising could cause significant harm to competition in the Internet advertising marketplace.”

The acquisition is potentially problematic for reasons of privacy as well. “DoubleClick collects an enormous quantity of information on individual Web users’ preferences, and privacy advocates have expressed very serious concerns regarding the consequences of this data coming under the control of Google due to the fact that Google is the dominant Internet search engine and can also track individuals’ search requests,” the senators note. “Therefore, we believe that this deal raises fundamental consumer privacy concerns worthy of serious scrutiny.”

The senators’ arguments echo ones we’ve heard before–from the European Union and Microsoft, and from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Though, as Danny Sullivan notes over at Search Engine Land, they’re a tad bit more hysterical. Certainly, Microsoft’s $6 billion purchase of digital-ad firm aQuantive suggests the barriers to entry in the Internet advertising marketplace aren’t more than knee high. And as for privacy, well, Sun chairman Scott McNealy once said: “You have no privacy, get over it.”

Rep. Bobby Rush (D., Ill.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, announced the inquiry in a letter to the FTC. “There is widespread concern about the proposed merger between Google and DoubleClick that the Federal Trade Commission currently is reviewing,” Rush wrote. “Concerns have focused not only on the implications for competition–in online advertising and other possibly affected markets–but also on the potentially enormous impact on consumer privacy. Consumer groups in the United States and Europe as well as the European Commission’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party have expressed growing alarm over the implications for consumer privacy from the practices of these companies, especially if they combine.”

Sounds heavy. And it is. Certainly being called to testify before House and Senate subcommittees about an acquisition that is already facing scrutiny from U.S. antitrust regulators is no walk in the park. How will Google convince legislators that its proposed acquisition of DoubleClick–which some estimate would give it control of 78% of the advertising tools available to publishers and 45% of those available to advertisers–won’t harm competition? That “you can make money without doing evil” refrain only goes so far, you know.

Regardless, Microsoft’s not sweating it a bit. “We’re happy with the price we paid. We believe it’s exactly the right company to buy, so we’re willing to pay the value we are paying today,” said company CFO Chris Liddell during a call with analysts today. “We will use the strength of our balance sheet when we think it’s necessary to drive growth going forward. This deal takes our advertising business to a new level. This allows us to take a bigger piece of that $40 billion pie that is still growing.”

The WPP-24/7 Real Media deal follows Google’s recent acquisition of DoubleClick and Yahoo’s purchase of Right Media and puts to rest rumors that Microsoft was considering offering as much as $1 billion for 24/7 Real Media. Which begs the question: Has the software giant turned its attentions to aQuantive or ValueClick? Or has it concluded that there’s no reason to acquire an ad network when it already has a killer publisher ad server?