Google buys DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion 351
marvinalone writes "The New York Times reports that Google has purchased DoubleClick. That seems to be the conclusion to the speculation we've talked about earlier. From the article: 'Google reached an agreement today to acquire DoubleClick, the online advertising company, from two private equity firms for $3.1 billion in cash, the companies announced, an amount that was almost double the $1.65 billion in stock that Google paid for YouTube late last year.'"
Won't change much for me (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope it was for the client list (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Won't change much for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously though, Google doesn't have a monopoly on on-line text advertising (even pay per-click), Yahoo has got into that business (formally Overture)[http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com] and I'm sure other companies have as well. This [http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/executi
And there are still heaps of other advertisers out their, and you know what, I block almost all of them (Adblock and NoScript, 'tis great). (For most sites, it is seriously, if they can't cope without my viewing their ads (even if I'm never going to ever buy anything), then I guess I can do without them. For sites like this, I like to think that I am helping to contribute to more people coming here by having insightful and interesting comments. After all, that is what gets the people looking at the site, and thus the ads.)
Re:Won't change much for me (Score:3, Interesting)
Likewise, browsing website A will often give negative opinions of it, sponsored by website B. "Toolset A buggy? Try Toolset B!" etc.
That's when they got blocked.
Bad ad-approval monkeys. No banana for you.
Re:whoa (Score:5, Interesting)
When I saw this headline, all I could think was "Google buys up another chunk of the internet." Seriously -- DoubleClick is everywhere. It's almost like google's trying to become the web.
Strategy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sad to say, but (Score:5, Interesting)
Although I also wandered what Google was getting itself into buying a company that notoriously places tracking cookies on computers everywhere, I can see what they're trying to do. I only hope that Google will clean them up instead of Doubleclick dirtying Google. They should stop putting tracking cookies on people's computers, remove any tracking cookies already on the computer, and deny any overly flashy banner ads. That would strongly increase Google's credibility and help eliminate some of the garbage on the Internet.
Re:D'OH! (Score:4, Interesting)
The cynic in me is wondering: What if this was a Microsoft ploy. Everyone said Google was bidding to drive the price up for MS... what if MS was only feigning interest so that google would drop 3 Gigabills on something that is pretty much blocked to hell and back by anyone with clue.
They did it to change DoubleClick (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:D'OH! (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know anyone who doesn't block doubleclick.
Re:whoa (Score:5, Interesting)
I always thought the name of the game was to keep your focus
and not dilute your efforts. And as far as I can tell,
the only reason Google is everywhere that Microsoft wants to
go is because they see what Google does, and want to emulate
that. That is reactive, and seems like a sure way to lose
your way. I dont like Microsoft much as a company, but
in the past you had to give them credit for not losing
focus. They kept after things they started until they got
it basically usable, and mostly solid. And did a better
job of that than many other companies. Microsoft should
be concerned with finding the ( lawful ) strategies and
tactics that get them where they want to be, and stop letting
other companies define so much of thier roadmap.
New slogan for the Doubleclick division... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hope so. But then again, I hope for world peace as well.
Re:D'OH! (Score:4, Interesting)
In reality though, I know a lot of people who didn't even have a pop-up blocker until it was finally added to Internet Explorer. Blocking ads on web pages? I don't know a single non-geek who has an adblocker installed. If they're not interested, they just ignore them.
Re:So now... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hasn't happened yet though... six years ago when I started blocking ads I thought it would become inevitable.
Re:D'OH! (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't block ads. If a site is an Ad farm, I won't go there, period.
If a site has one or two ads that I can tolerate, that's cool.
I do block popups though, if you can't present your content with the window that "I" allowed for you to create on my desktop, you can go
There are good blogs (term, ugh) out there who solely rely on ads to maintain their blog, think about what "you" are doing to them by blocking the ads.
I hate flashy annoying advertisements as much as the next guy, but the way I think of it is that it's up to the people behind the website to control how much crap they put on their page. If we (me and the web site owners) don't agree on the quantity, I close my browser window (deal is off)..
Re:Sad to say, but (Score:5, Interesting)
Google ad sense operates on a different level...using cookies is just part of the game. Via IP pingbacks, toolbar tracking, and account identification, users may unkowningly be giving out alot more data than they realize.
Say for instance that you use Gmail. or any Google service that requires login. Google can track you via that login to each site you visit that has a google ad (70% of the net from what I understand). See, doubleclick never had this part of the equation...they never had account info. Google can tie your IPs, usernames, email content, and web browsing activity...and you can't do jack about it (short of blocking the google scripts themselves). Even without login account info, Google has the ability to track your individual machine via IP pingbacks. If you nav to page one, the google ad gets your exposed ip, then the next page you visit that has a google ad...yep..that ip is used to track that navigation. No cookie needed. Of course, if your behind a firewall, only the firewall ip would get exposed. But still...do you really want to give anyone that much information about you?
Re:What ever happened to ... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not offbase to ask the person who sneers at "do no evil" to think about their own standards. Are your principles just PR because you've had to make difficult moral decisions, or even evil decisions? Does being a corporation imply that Google must be full of it, while you should be forgiven?
"Do no evil" is an impossibly high bar that Google has chosen to be accountable to. When they screw up, they get to hear about it from cynics like you, who pretend to see the world through black-and-white glasses, and pretend that the moral sense is absolute and good and evil are obvious. As five seconds reading the two brains thing should convince you, there's no pony in seeing the world this way (here's a link, by the way [erraticwisdom.com]).
I don't work for Google. The nerve you hit, I guess, is the one that can't bear to see idealism being trashed for no reason. In the world we do have, hope for something better is all we've got. If corporate accountability is it, so be it.