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.
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
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...
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?
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.