There is no disagreement, though, over the potential for Google's acquisition of DoubleClick to have a significant impact on the company and on the online ad industry. Google has been working with both the U.S. and EU's antitrust departments to OK the merger. We got the go-ahead in the US in December and today, the EU OK'ed the deal as well.
In allowing the merger to go through, the EU concluded that Google could not successfully employ anti-competitive practices with the presence of viable ad serving competitors, like Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO).
In a Forbes story out today, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, "With DoubleClick, Google now has the leading display ad platform, which will enable us to rapidly bring to market advances in technology and infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies, while improving the relevance of advertising for users."
This merger gives Google a complete suite of tools to serve both sponsored links and display ads to publishing partners. As a larger percentage of branded, Fortune 500 companies start allocating larger budgets to online advertising, DoubleClick will play an important role in Google's plan to be the Advertising Operating System both on the web and off.
Zack Miller is the managing editor of IsraelNewsletter.com and a former equity analyst for a leading multinational hedge fund. Author is long GOOG stock.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-12-2008 @ 12:37PM
gumby said...
Stop contributing toyour 401K plans now.... Save for your house mortgage.... Your home is more important than 401K plans, right?? Protect your home now.. Remember you cant touch 401K money until you are at ripe ol' age of 59 and half...... Your home will be lost before then, right?? First things first,, right?? Screw stock market for now and buy at cheaper prices much later.....