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Conventional wisdom in Washington is that big corporate mergers are harder to get past regulators when the Democrats are in power, but President Barack Obama’s administration has shaken this assumption.

Instead of blocking major deals outright it has sought to heavily modify them. For this reason, analysts in Washington are largely sanguine about the chance of AT&T’s proposed $39bn acquisition of Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA division securing clearance from the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission. On President watch, two of the largest and most controversial deals for decades have been approved but with heavy “remedies”, or conditions which must be met by the companies for the transactions to obtain regulatory clearance. “One significant difference between this and the previous administration is that under Bush the DoJ was much more likely to [let a deal] go through unfettered, or challenge it and block it,” says John Taladay, an antitrust lawyer at Howrey. “They weren't as likely to cut deals. The [Obama] administration has been a little more inclined to accept partial remedies to let deals go through.” Michael Sohn, a leading antitrust lawyer at Davis Polk, agrees. “I believe it is harder to clear a merger without remedies now than it was during the prior administration,” he says.

Advocacy groups representing minorities have been voicing their support for AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom.

The Alliance for Digital Equality, the Hispanic Federation and the National Black Chamber of Commerce were among the groups arguing the merger would benefit minority communities. But the timing of the statements have led some to question the motivations of the groups. While the Hispanic Federation didn't respond to requests for comment, both ADE and the NBCC acknowledged receiving financial support from AT&T. The groups' statements also mirror those issued by hundreds of minority advocacy groups and lawmakers in support for Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal last year. That deal was approved by the government in January over vocal objections from competitors. Minority Media & Telecom Council president David Honig said his organization has not yet taken a stance on the merger, but expressed irritation at critics who question the motives of minority organizations supporting the merger. "Give these organizations credit for being intelligent. It doesn't take a long time to analyze things. They aren't corrupt and they weren't paid," Honig said.

AT&T's decision to purchase T-Mobile could throw a monkey wrench in a key Federal Communications Commission (FCC) goal: Convincing Congress to pass incentive auction legislation this year.

Paul Gallant at MF Global said in a note to clients: "We believe the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile transaction reduces the likelihood of legislation this year that would facilitate the movement of spectrum from broadcast TV and government uses into the commercial wireless market." The chances of passing spectrum legislation could rise again in 2012 and 2013, he said. He placed the odds of major spectrum legislation this year at 35 percent.

For all the growth in the digital book market over the last few years, Google Books is still the only project with the outsize ambition of scanning every book, and it’s not an exaggeration to say the deal it reached with publishers would have changed our relationship to books forever. Now, that agreement looks like a failure.

So what does that mean for the digital-book business and for the universal digital library Google is trying to create? For the modern e-book market, it’s really status quo. It’s hard to see anyone coming out ahead because this deal fell through, unless you count Google competitors as indirect “winners” in any Google setback. Amazon and Apple have built healthy businesses selling contemporary, in-print e-books. The big money will continue to be in that space, which is unaffected by this settlement. It’s also a market where Google is a new entrant and a small presence, so far.

But even though there aren't any big winners from this recent decision, there are some parties who lost out. First of all, Google would have been positioned to have a dominant position in the market for in-copyright but out-of-print works, so it has lost something. That’s not a huge or lucrative market, but it’s not insignificant either, and would have seen a fair amount of use by researchers and universities. Speaking of academics, they’re the ones most likely to want full copies of hard-to-find out-of-print books, so they have also clearly lost out here. Finally, authors of some out-of-print books would have seen a new, albeit modest, revenue stream. The “status quo” for them just means that when searchers find their works in Google Book Search, they'll continue to be directed to used book stores -- a solution that’s inconvenient for users and doesn't get a penny to publishers and authors.