p2pnet - rss feed: Google buys DoubleClick
p2pnet.net news:- Google has bought New York online advertising company DoubleClick from two private equity firms for $3.1 billion in cash.
“The deal, the largest acquisition ever for Google, ends a weekslong bidding war with Microsoft Corp. and other contenders,” says the San Francisco Chronicle. “It also gives the Internet search company a significant edge over Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. in the $28.8 billion online ad market.”
San Francisco private equity company Hellman & Friedman bought DoubleClick for $1.1 billion in 2005, says the story.
Google ceo Eric Schmidt is quoted as saying DoubleClick’s software, “as well as its close relationships with Web publishers, advertising agencies and advertisers,” will help it, “cement its leading position in the business of placing electronic ads on Web sites”.
Industry experts said Google’s high bid makes sense, “because of the size and quality of DoubleClick’s customer base,” says the Mercury News.
“DoubleClick’s software is installed by top-tier publishers around the world to help them decide what ads to serve on their site and to help manage their advertising inventory.
“Based in New York City, in the same building where Google has an office, DoubleClick has more than 1,500 customers. Its top competitors are aQuantive and 24/7 Real Media.”
Among other things, “The doubleclick.com website may use persistent cookies, Web beacons and information collected in our log files (such as Internet Protocol Address, referring URLs, etc.),” admits the DoubleClick privacy statement.
It also states, “In addition, DoubleClick may serve ads on this and other websites using our own DART ad-serving technology. In doing so, one of our ad servers will place or read a unique ad-serving cookie on your computer and will use non-personal information about your browser and your activity at this site to serve ads on this and other sites. The ad-serving cookie is a persistent cookie.”
A “persistent cookie gets entered by your Web browser into the ‘Cookies’ folder on your computer and remains in this ‘Cookies’ folder after you close your browser,” explains DoubleClick.
A Web beacon is an, “often-transparent graphic image [meaning you can’t see it and therefore don’t know it’s there] usually no larger than 1 pixel x 1 pixel, that is placed on a Web site or in an e-mail that is used to monitor the behavior of the user visiting the Web site or sending the e-mail,” explains Internet.com.
“When the HTML code for the Web beacon points to a site to retrieve the image, at the same time it can pass along information such as the IP address of the computer that retrieved the image, the time the Web beacon was viewed and for how long, the type of browser that retrieved the image and previously set cookie values.”
Also See:
San Francisco Chronicle - Google wins DoubleClick bidding war, April 14, 2007
Mercury News - Google to buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, April 12, 2007
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
April 15th, 2007 at 5:02 am
When the hell is big business too big?
April 15th, 2007 at 10:33 am
The doubleclick servers are in so many blacklists around the world (AdBlock, proxy-based blocklists, etc.). However, they are now likely to be moved into Google domain, making them escape the filters people have set up.
There was already an issue of merger of DoubleClick and Abacus Direct, which would let them combine the citizen data they harvested. http://www.junkbusters.com/doubleclick.html And now add Google and its database to the equation….. you get the result.
Many of you are using Gmail, by the way.
April 15th, 2007 at 10:35 am
And to add, Google should not be treated as ‘do no evil’ company, as it has the same raison d’etre as any other company - to make profits. And profits eclipse everything else.
April 15th, 2007 at 10:56 am
How can a company profess to “do no evil” when they just purchased another company known as one of the “scum of the earth”? I’ve been blocking and/or deleting DoubleClick cookies almost as long as there has been a WWW.
How much money is enough, Google guys? I guess since you haven’t choked on your billions already, you imagine you can digest a few more useless billions of dollars - at the cost of your souls.