Slashdot Mirror
DoubleClick On The Blocks?
A reader writes: "Many sources report that DoubleClick - the world's leading supplier of cookies - may be up for sale. " There's also an AP report out as well. The online advertising market has been hard lately - but there's also been a widespread perception that DoubleClick has been resting on their laurels.
I'm not only one of the most hated businesses on the web, I'm also rich, and going to become a hell of a lot richer! Woo!
Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: doubleclick.net
Address: 127.0.0.1
Punch The Monkey If You Want To Buy Doubleclick!
Can't wait for Microsoft to buy out DoubleClick and TAKE OVER THE WORLD! :P
"DoubleClick has been resting on their laurels"
If by "resting on their laurels" you mean "Need to be taken out back of the Interweb and beaten to within an inch of their lives. Twice." then by all means: rest away.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
DoubleClick hired a financial adviser to study options including a sale of part or all of its businesses, a recapitalization, an extraordinary dividend, a share repurchase or a spinoff, pretty much the same thing any company will do, especially when its earnings are better than expected.
Its 3rd-quarter earnings was $15million, up from $6.3million last year, and fourth-quarter forecast is $72 million. So I don't think DoubleClick is going through a rough patch.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
If they really are the leading supplier of cookies, I think this is a golden opportunity for Girl Scouts of America to buy them out. Imagine the possibilities for increased profits!
I wish I could download a Samoa or two now...
Doubleclick was the very first host I mapped to 127.0.0.1 in my host file when web ads started to appear. I wonder how many people actully did that? I know that most of my co workers did it - even those that didn't know what it meant.
" It also lowered its fourth-quarter earnings forecast to $72 million to $77 million"
Obviously, not many, since they can make that kind of money.
Underholdning.info
Thank god for Firefox and ad-block. Doubleclick and it's clones are no longer an issue for me. I would hope that the demise of doubleclick and its obnoxious marketing would serve as a warning to others who would emulate its business model.
When all else fails, run.
Maybe we should take up a spreadfirefox.com-like donation and buy Doubleclick and then distroy all the data they have collected over the years.
Many sources report that DoubleClick - the world's leading supplier of cookies
DoubleClick is a terrible name for a cookie company. No wonder they are up for sale. They should have called it DoubleCrunch or DoubleCookie or something.
Do they have chocolate chip cookies?
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Google is the new guard, highly targeted ads that actually work. DoubleClick is the old guard, banner ads, spam and other annoying crap nobody ever likes to see. No wonder Google is kicking their ass.
The click-through-rates on Google AdWords compared to DoubleClick's garbage are astronomical.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
What about those damned websites that won't let you "Continue" until all the ads on the page have loaded (e.g. javascript)? I used the hosts file for a while; when this became an issue I switched to Firefox's Adblock Extension.
It's just sooooo sllllloooowwwww.
:)
Any page with doubleclick ads on it seems to get held up waiting for doubleclick's servers to do anything.
The words "Waiting for... blah.blah.doubleclick.blah" or similar used to be old friends, until I discovered the hosts file
Doubleclick was the very first host I mapped to 127.0.0.1 in my host file when web ads started to appear.
But even then, think about it: each time you hit a page with a link to some doubleclick url, you end up hitting port 80 of your own machine. That's right, even with doubleclick.com disabled, Doubleclick, Inc. manages to make you DoS yourself!
Talk about an evil company...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
> DoubleClick, you can't pass my Firefox's AdBlock! No clicks for you.
> Muuuuhahhahahahha!
Actually, I rather like clicking on ads then just closing down the window or hitting `back`. Perhaps AdBlock could be modded to click on the ads a few times in the background?
It would be "Is Doubleclick on the block"? Meaning, the auction block or potentially the chopping block. "On blocks" refers to rusting cars in somebody's front yard. Jeez, is even the Slashdot editing being farmed out overseas?
I don't respond to AC's.
An anonymous investor, identified only as "C.M." was said to have put in a bid for $30 billion dollars to buy out DoubleClick today. Experts believe C.M. may have a personal agenda for buying DoubleClick, but could not speculate as to his reasons.
The anonymous investor was quoted as saying "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me."
Google is a much bigger company, with a bigger pull for those that want to advertise. They also probably target their ads better than doubleclick. Oh and Google's motto is "do no evil" not "all your personal information are belong to us."
It's easy to see why Google would have a superior position in the market now. Better technology, bigger reach and a more honorable policy toward Internet users.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
My cousin is a salemen for doubleclick (hey don't DoS me, I'm just passing on some info). When he took the job, I told him he was working for one of the top ten internet public enemies, but sales are his thing and doubleclick did generate sales. I don't recall thhe exact figures he quoted me a few months back, but the number of doubleclick related ads on the web was well into the billions (not hard to believe) so even relatively few sales generated via doubleclick translated into $$$ for them.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
What if some unscrupulous entity were to purchase Doubleclick?
What would happen to the millions of peoples' personal data that Doubleclick owns?
Who could guarantee that it would remain secure, and not fall into the wrong hands?
Oh, wait...
Though, to be frank, I would consider Peace in the middle east to be a better sign of the Apocolypse.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Which is why the smarter ones amongst us mapped it (and numerous others) to 0.0.0.0 instead. I've yet to find a single IP stack where that isn't the network equivalent of /dev/null.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Make that three- they (and many other advertisers and other sites) needlessly set cookie expiration dates to 2040 and whatnot; I wouldn't mind it so much if they didn't collect like a plague; every few weeks I go through my cookie list and there are literally thousands of cookies from a hundred different advertisers all set to expire in a zillion years. It's absurd, and clearly they don't get it- these cookies should have an expiration of maybe one year at the absolute most. A month or so should be fine in most cases.
I think someone should write a plugin for the various free browsers that punishes bad cookie lifetime params- maybe it inversely sets the actual expiration date in an inverse fashion if the requested date is too far off. For example, over a year, start actually going back down for each year they add. So a cookie marked good until 2040 will actually be good for about a few hours- or less.
Users will bitch, site developers will be forced to look at why it's happening, and the answer from the internet community will be "set more reasonable cookie expiration dates and it won't happen". They'll be in the uncomfortable position of trying to explain why they need such long dates.
Either that or simply allow the user to set a maximum cookie retention time. What I'd REALLY like is a browser that doesn't save cookies for sites I haven't bookmarked, or combine the ideas- cookies for sites not bookmarked aren't saved very long.
Please help metamoderate.
Brilliant. Much like evolutionary theory, business exists to fill a need. Whether you like it or not, SOMEONE wants the business that DoubleClick offeres. Kill it off, and you have created a vaccuum that will be filled by another company. And we will be a little bit poorer!
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Anyone want to chip in, buy them out and shut them down, so we can browse the web in peace?
Hmmmm.... Could we sue them if the cookies get stale? Is that a public health risk? BTW, if they are the largest supplier of cookies, why don't I see them in Safeway?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
i wonder if this being hit hard thing has anything to do with windows sp2 having ie block popups by default :|
-judging another only defines yourself
Firefox lets you selectively block certain sites from setting cookies. I don't let Doubleclick set ANY cookies EVER on my computers. In fact, the only sites that DO get to are the ones where I shop at, or I use logins. Every time a site tries to set one I get a popup allowing me to deny it. On a new install there'll be a lot of these but as the block list gets populated with the major advertisers it calms down and now I don't see them very often. And I'd rather see the occasional notification than let these guys spy on me.
But I have DVR on my tv. I don't watch the commercials anymore. As long as the majority of people keep watching them, those of us smart enough (or sneaky enough?) to find ways around watching them will benefit from the blind stupidity of the masses. Oh, and for those of you using firefox who haven't checked out the "Adblock" extension, you should, immediately.
Which is why the smarter ones amongst us mapped it (and numerous others) to 0.0.0.0 instead. I've yet to find a single IP stack where that isn't the network equivalent of /dev/null.
:-)
No, that's my IP address, you insensitive clod!
Ahem.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
how about, if someone has something worth saying, they'll pay to say it? self financed websites were all the rage before the net started being pitched as a moneymaking proposition.
Except for a tcp stack derived from an ancient BSD that instead uses 0.0.0.0 as the broadcast address.
http://www.kbalertz.com/kb_108783.aspx
"However, banner advertising is like TV advertising. Its "presence"."
X10 went out of business. That's how effective "presence" was. Who the hell cares, if "everyone" knows about it. Clearly it didn't work.
Google, on the other hand, generated about $800M in revenue in the last quarter. From what I've read that's almost entirely advertising revenue. DoubleClick, on the other hand, made $81M in their last quarter.
Looks like "presence" doesn't really pay.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
voip01:~# ping -c 4 0.0.0.0
PING 0.0.0.0 (127.0.0.1) from 127.0.0.1 : 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.052 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.014 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.013 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.013 ms
--- 0.0.0.0 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% loss, time 2997ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.013/0.023/0.052/0.016 ms
voip01:~# uname -a
Linux voip01 2.4.26-1-686-smp #1 SMP Sun May 2 19:39:21 CEST 2004 i686 unknown
voip01:~#
because the more cookies you have - particularly from the larger ad networks like doubleclick - the easier it is to track you - across dozens and dozens of sites - and all of the invasions of privacy that go along with them.
it's not about the filesize - it's about the information contained in those cookies.
Gekido's Lair
Greetings -
I understand taking issue with the collection of "personal data," its storage and its usage to target you without your express consent(1). Most of the loudest (and most highly-moderated) voices here seem to have the biggest problems with the Advertisements themselves.
NB: I nether use DoubleClick as a publisher or am a "fanboy" of them as a company. That said, the protests seem to miss the point that without online advertising - and therefore, DoubleClick - a good portion of the content we have available to us on the web would NOT be available to us on the web for "free."
This is a minority opinion - and no, I'm not new around here - but what's with all the contempt for a business proposition that lets DoubleClick to make a buck, web publishers to make a buck, and consumers to get content inexpensively or "freely?" Do you find the ads themselves that odious? Do they get in the way of what you're working to achieve in any appreciable way? (non-rhetorical questions)
Advertising in any medium is 99% horsecrap(2), but it's basically why the media exist: take away the ads and most of your favorite TV & radio shows, magazines, newspapers and web sites will go away. End of story.
IMO, the backlash seen here is not in proportion to the offense.
(1) - Users provide implicit concent when they visit sites with advertising run by DCLK or any ad network that'll track them with cookies.
(2) - And that leaves the ~1% that's actually entertaining and / or informative.
Again, tin foil hat stuff. All they do is track when and how often you visit sites. I thought that this cookie paranoia was dead around 2000? You can always just not accept cookies if it's such a terrible thing. Also, setting cookies to expire in a year or two isn't going to reduce the number of cookies you have for at least several years, if that.
I don't respond to AC's.
As much as I dislike doubleclick I like the fact that they make it easy to block their ads, perhaps a future company or future owner will make it harder, so double click going away or changing hands may not be so great.