Rumor: Microsoft To Mimic Google And Yahoo In Online Ad Deal

from the third-time's-a-charm dept

Tue, May 1st 2007 11:50am — Joseph Weisenthal

When news first broke that DoubleClick was a likely to be acquired, the story was that Microsoft had initially sought to buy the company, which prompted Google to step in and steal the deal. Just yesterday, Yahoo went and bought itself its own online advertising firm, in a move that shadowed the DoubleClick deal. Amidst all of this, several analysts started playing the "who's next" guessing game, as it seemed clear that Microsoft would be forced into making a deal of its own. Today there's a rumor that Microsoft is mulling a $1 billion bid for 24/7 Media, a publicly traded firm that's been at the center of much of the speculation, along with competing firm Aquantive. A possible wrinkle here is that 24/7 Media is also thought to be on the wish list of the WPP Group, a traditional advertising firm. If both rumors are true (and at this point, it's hard to gauge their validity), it could set up an interesting battle between two companies with vastly different agendas, and ideas about what they'd do with the company.

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RandomThoughts, 1 May 2007 @ 12:01pm

The M&A activity is interesting, Microsoft will buy someone, rumors even have them buying Yahoo.

A big story that kind of has been buried though is the fundamental shift over at Google. Google has up until now, always kept consumers privacy and past history out of its product scope. Their position was that by utilizing prior history or cookies, would be an infringement on its users privacy. The recent purchase of DCLK and other announcements made by Google, support that now Google will begin utilizing Behavioral targeting tactics to increase its relevancy. This is a huge shift in its culture for the one time “do good, don’t do evil” behemoth.
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- Anonymous Coward, 1 May 2007 @ 2:19pm
  
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ridley4, 1 May 2007 @ 2:22pm

Information on how you run around on the internets can be used for good or evil. Google may have some way to turn the feature off, also. Don't think that tracking your movement is instantly evil.
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RandomThoughts, 1 May 2007 @ 3:03pm

Ridley, depends on who you talk to. Google in the past said they don't use behaviorial targeting because they respect the privacy of their users. Now things change and they will, if they thought in the past that using private information was evil, how is using it now not?

I don't have a problem with it, but Google did in the past. What changed?
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HostWW, 1 May 2007 @ 11:29pm

Who says you have to?
Who says you have to use any of the services that utilize anything that tracks you...

Google Searches != Having a Google Account

And as for the cookies issue with Doubleclick... get with the times... Learn to block cookies not originating from the site you're visiting and/or filter ad cookies... its nothing new...

:P

http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/wwwsf2.html#CLT-Q10
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