GOOGLE has once more outmaneuvered rivals Microsoft and Yahoo! by winning a bidding war over online advertising company DoubleClick Inc., but was this latest acquisition really worth $3.1 billion?
Of course, Google has a lot of money to spare, and this latest coup gives the company more ammo in the online advertising war.
Here’s an excerpt from a San Francisco Chronicle article:
“This merger is really part of a global growth strategy for Google,” Eric Schmidt, Google Chief Executive Officer, said in announcing the deal after the markets closed Friday.
The deal easily surpasses the $1.65 billion Google spent to buy online video-sharing site YouTube in November.
Google’s boundless ambition to expand beyond search has become a matter of global fascination. This time, Google is mining deeper into its core business.
The challenge for Google is that it has yet to turn YouTube into a revenue stream, yet here it is making its biggest acquisition to date. The San Francisco Chronicle article also pointed out that Google runs the risk of further alienating web publishers who rely on it for advertising.
Still, the value of DoubleClick is strategic, not just in terms of its technology but also the long-term relationships it has developed with advertisers. Not to mention the fact that by outbidding Microsoft and Yahoo!, Google has denied them another chess piece in their own strategy for the online advertising market.
In the end, the long-term impact of this deal might be worth more than the actual value of DoubleClick itself.
April 21st, 2007 at 11:03 pm
[...] is willing to pay $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, but privacy groups are now seeking to block the [...]
April 15th, 2007 at 11:37 am
It’s all part of their plan for global advertising domination.