Google buys Doubleclick for $3bn

[r2d2]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6554595.stm

I never realised they would be worth that much..

[KLB]

Hmmm.... Maybe Google will open Double Click up to more websites and allow us to run a Double Click banners in addition to our three AdSense banners.

We can only hope.

[Westech]

This is big news! Here's my take:

--There have been rumors around for a while that Google was planning to develop a free adserving tool similar to the paid service that Doubleclick and others provide. I'm expecting Google to release a fully functional free version of Doubleclick's service, similar to what they did when they bought Urchin and released it for free as Google Analytics.

--Doubleclick had previously announced it was developing an ad marketplace to allow publishers to sell ad inventory to the highest bidder (similar to what RMX is doing now.) We may now see something like this come out of Google. If so, and if Google can use their muscle to get the bigger ad networks on board such as Tribal Fusion, Casale, etc., then this could be a very good thing for publishers (at the expense of giving Google even more information about our sites and businesses.)

--Owning Doubleclick and all of their existing customer base will give Google access to even more information on internet advertising and traffic patterns to add to the info coming in from search, adsense, adwords, analytics, etc.

Whew!

[Chris]

Hmmm.... Maybe Google will open Double Click up to more websites and allow us to run a Double Click banners in addition to our three AdSense banners.

We can only hope.

Doubleclick sold that portion of their business to valueclick a long time ago. They're strickly a software company now, they no longer act as a network.

[MaxS]

--There have been rumors around for a while that Google was planning to develop a free adserving tool similar to the paid service that Doubleclick and others provide. I'm expecting Google to release a fully functional free version of Doubleclick's service, similar to what they did when they bought Urchin and released it for free as Google Analytics.

That's what I'm hoping for.

Doubleclick sold that portion of their business to valueclick a long time ago. They're strickly a software company now, they no longer act as a network.

Are you sure about that?

Google gets access to DoubleClick’s advertising software and, perhaps more importantly, their customers and network.

[Chris]

I'm pretty sure. They have a network perse, but don't do any selling, they just provide the platform.

But I could be confusing them with someone else.

They used to, long ago, have network like Valueclick, casale, burst, etc. Thats how they started. You go to their website not and they don't talk about that. Its all about ad serving technology & management.

[Dan Morgan]

Chris is right, DoubleClick are solely a technology provider and have been for some years. Recent developments suggest Doubleclick may come back into the media business, but not in the traditional sense and of course this news about the Google acquisition may change it all again.

They also sold their EU media network to Adlink some years ago.

[Cutter]

Well, they were talking about a live ad inventory auction system being rolled out later this year (before the buyout.)

[john190]

I heard about this in another forum. It went for nearly double or even slightly more than double to what Youtube was bought for.

I think they bought it because Doubleclick has the software that they need plus some of the major sites use them like myspace.