As was widely expected, the FCC today approved the Comcast/NBC Universal merger with some conditions. The Justice Department still has to give its okay too, but everyone expects that to happen shortly. The full details aren't yet clear, but from some reports it looks like the "conditions" are pretty vague concepts on program carriage and support for non-discrimination, without an explicit requirement. None of this is surprising. I still think critics of this deal may have overreacted, as I still expect the combined company to continue to blunder its way forward.

You may recall just how well GPS-device maker Garmin played the acquisition game last last year, forcing its main rival, TomTom to spend much, much more than originally intended in a deal for map maker Tele Atlas. Every step that Garmin took seemed to work to its advantage, first raising the bid for Tele Atlas, forcing TomTom to nearly double its bid, then buying up some Tele Atlas shares on the open market so that it's actually making a profit when it sells those shares to TomTom, and finally signing a long term deal with Tele Atlas competitor Navteq (which Nokia is acquiring). Following all this, Garmin must be giddy to find out that the EU has objections to the TomTom purchase which will force the company to make concessions. These objections won't scuttle the deal completely, but will (of course) make it somewhat less than what TomTom hoped it would be. Garmin must be thrilled.