Google is back

Google shares experienced a spike this morning, up more than $18 ; reaching $436 levels during today’s trading session on news from Brussels. The European Union regulators have finally cleared Google’s $3.1 billion bid for online ad tracker DoubleClick on Tuesday, saying the acquisition won’t curb competition for online ads.

New York-based DoubleClick helps its customers place and track online advertising, including search ads, which Google - more than its nearest search competitors Yahoo and Microsoft - has turned into a lucrative business. It places ads on Web pages that targeted consumers are likely to use, generating money for smaller publishers and lesser-visited pages.

The U.S. Department of Justice signed off on the deal in December, meaning Google has cleared its last major hurdle before acquiring DoubleClick. Meanwhile, rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., as well as advertisers and privacy advocates, have sought to block the takeover, claiming Google Inc. would have too much control over the online ad market.

However, the European Commission said that it had concluded that “the transaction would be unlikely to have harmful effects on consumers, either in ad serving or in intermediation in online advertising markets, and that the deal “would not significantly impede effective competition.”