Why Microsoft Wanted To Buy Claria

from the it-all-becomes-as-bit-clearer dept

Remember over the summer when Microsoft "leaked" information about how they might want to buy Claria, most well known for the adware Gator? After many people reacted negatively, Microsoft popped that trial balloon and said they weren't going to buy the company. Well, with Microsoft's recent "Live" announcement, where they made it clear that much of the Live offerings will be ad supported, the thinking behind the possible Claria purchase became a lot clearer. There's an article today talking about how much Microsoft is going to be relying on their new AdCenter ad targeting platform to squeeze more money out of any advertising on the Live systems. The problem is that, right now, AdCenter only does keyword based matching, and Microsoft desperately wants behavioral matching -- which is what Claria is now offering (even though that behavioral matching is based on surreptitiously installed software). What this means, of course, is that there's plenty more to come, and don't think for a second Microsoft won't look at other buying opportunities in the behavioral advertising space to figure out some way to make an ad-supported model actually work.
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  • identicon
    nonuser, 11 Nov 2005 @ 11:04am

    good catch

    I had completely forgotten about the Claria fiasco, figuring it was the brainstorm of some random EVP who was quietly re-orged into a less demanding position.

    It's also interesting how mute the Microsoft reaction has been on the Sony DRM rootkit story... they're saying they're "concerned", but so far haven't denounced it as a massive invasion of privacy.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    adware squirrel, 11 Nov 2005 @ 11:31am

    Adware / spyware in Live "applications"

    Gee, we have adware infecting mostly the browsers. How do you think people will react to the scenario of typing a letter to someone, and having an advertisement pop up.

    Scenario: Person writes a letter to a manufacturer of some product. As they type, the ad box on the side (if we are so lucky) pops up with advertisements for a corresponding product.

    Please spare me the convenience of "Live" products.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    John Doe, 11 Nov 2005 @ 12:16pm

    Pics from Office

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Jerry, 11 Nov 2005 @ 2:47pm

    Claria

    ...and just what makes Microsoft think that they have something that I would *want* to use, let alone buy?! ...talk about nerve!

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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