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Microsoft to Buy DoubleClick?
roscoetoon writes to tell us Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft is in talks to buy DoubleClick. Seen as a move to compete against the Google advertising engine Double Click owners Hellman & Friedman are seeking a $2 billion payday. "The purchase would give Microsoft tools to battle Google Inc. for ads that appear on Web sites. DoubleClick works with advertisers to create online campaigns, such as streaming video clips to promote New Line Cinema's movie "The Number 23." The New York-based company's Dart technology monitors the performance of Internet ads for marketing companies."
Edit please.
Youtube = 1.6 billion
DoubleClick = 2?
Your thoughts?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
DoubleClick is not accessible from any computer I use. I don't believe a change in its ownership will change that
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
once MS gets through with them!
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
The company that does bloated and hated software buys the company that does bloated and hated internet ads. Its a perfect match.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Their roaring success: DOS + Windows was not achieved by taking away market share from others (ie. Apple etc), but by going into a new market. They used illegal means to get Office in place.
Whenever they have tried to eat into an existing market where they cannot leverage Windows they have failed miserably: Zune, MSN, .... Their aquisitions are much the same: hotmail...
Doubleclick is likely to end up on the junk pile too.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Do be evil.
KDE users won't have to pay royalties to Microsoft for launching applications on the desktop!
"and coming soon"
I can't wait!
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
...I've had doubleclick's servers blocked in my HOSTS file for ages now.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Yeah, it helps to read TFA, I first thought the term was literal, but the company paints a different picture on the title.
"I only know 2 things: The love for me, and the fear of me."
Will it be as repressive as google? Read their terms of service. There is a whole list of things you cant discuss on an adsence page. Guns and drugs to name two.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Wouldn't it be cool if a distro shipped an "ad-free" version of firefox, i.e. it comes with a hosts file of good repute and just asks you for root password to install it?
I think that should be an installation option on the new generation (Cf. ubuntu) of desktop distros.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Oh boy, the Zune of internet advertising. I'm sure the Google people are really worried.
...microsoft patent the use of commas and other punctuation marks - and i just didn't notice?
duh.
Just so long as they don't patent the double-click.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
If you use Firefox, snag Adblock Plus and the Filterset.G Updater. If you're using Internet Destr-- Er, I mean Internet Explorer, woe is you, but at least snag the Google Toolbar, which I think blocks DoubleClick ads.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Yours faithfully,
Joe (Firefox + AdBlock Plus) User.
Windows wasn't a foregone conclusion - in the early days there was GEM, and during Windows' development there was also OS/2. Office didn't just materialise either, there was Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect/WordStar/DBase III. Then there's Netscape - they killed Netscape-the-company completely by, despite the many myths, simply being better than Netscape v4.
Tried to eat into an existing market with Hotmail? Hotmail was the market - it's all the others that are the followers here. Some did it better of course, but MS were not trying to take away market share from others. They were trying to prevent losing users to web-based interfaces which they did not own.
Zune and MSN...yep, agreed. Doubleclick - different class. It's not an end-user product, and due to this I rather suspect they'll do well with it. MS do cater to developers and API users pretty well, and that's what you're talking about when it comes to an advert site. In the end it can only be good to have two vast firms competing for your site's space and offering you cash accordingly.
Well, good for the site creator of course. For me, I mutter a few words of gratitude for AdBlock and Pithhelmet and then carry on regardless.
Cheers,
Ian
AdBlock Plus filter set to *doubleclick.net*? Yes. Purchase away Microsoft.
Yeah, a bloated and hated company that has a huge amount of computers going to its site every day buys a company that has a huge amount of cookies on everybody's computers. Match the two together somehow and you probably have more of an issue than searching on google and using gmail at the same time...at least this would probably be able to tie a much lager portion of users to their surfing habits.
What could only add to the mix would be Microsoft + Double Click + Homeland Security (and maybe throw AT&T into the mix as well)
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Yet again, insane amounts of money are spent on things with very little substance but a high internet buzzword count.
Like last time, eventually investors will panic when they contemplate the very expensive pile of hot air they will have accumulated, and yet again the bubble will burst dramatically, sucking up billions of dollars that could have been invested in companies that actually make something and / or actually provide a service, and causing another European and North American recession.
Meanwhile, I'm investing all of my money in tulip bulbs.
apparently they've done away with an "r" ....
*doubleclick.microsoft.com*
*doubleclick.msn.com*
etc.
Slashdot is kind of like Playboy; we aren't here to read the articles.
Couldn't msft set it up so that the page won't load if filtering is enabled, or something?
SmoothWall Firewall
DansGuardian Content Filter
Domain Block of Ad-Servers.
Nope...I won't notice at all.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
stab_val(stab)->str_nok = 1;
(Quote from the /. footer.) Would someone care to explain?
Imagine what you could do - if you were not limited - with all of the data MSFT could gather and combine it with the marketing/advertising data of DoubleClick.
Think operating systems, browser, and office "features" here, people. The features gather more and more information as time goes on. Its already been happening over the last 5-10 years so the trend is certainly in that direction. I mean, thus far, Mr. Softie has been pretty easy (all things considered) on how much data he sends back home but I am sure things could be configured differently to gather a whole new set of information. A much larger, complex, and more intrusive set of information. And then they can market based on that data (DoubleClick). Like Google, cept Google doesn't have an operating system sitting on every damn computer in the world.
It could get very very ugly. I can envision several nasty things that I would do and thats only thinking about it 5 min.
Access to customers (data) + Marketing/advertising = big revenues for the seller of marketing and advertising products. That's what we are talking about here -- selling ads.
I already block them in my hosts file. This changes nothing.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Really? There's advertising on web pages? I hadn't noticed.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Nobody goes to Google Whatever for the ads. They go there because they want to use a useful, well-made service. You don't compete by making better ads. Nobody likes ads. Google gets away with it because their ads are unobtrusive, and nobody minds seeing (occasionally useful) ads on the side of their Gmail inbox. People are going to mind seeing giant streaming videos playing at full volume when they're trying to read an e-mail from their niece. If Microsoft wants to compete, they're going to have to spend a little less time trying to think about how to steal money from you by annoying you enough, and a bit more on making applications good enough that people won't mind ads.
I thought they invented it...
oh yeah ad.doublick.* I vaguely remember them...I added a 127.0.0.1 dns entry for them loooong ago. That would probably explain the broken link on the ad-box on THIS VERY PAGE, now wouldn't it :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Who the hell are they?
Btought to you by the letter F, and the letter U.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) to buy RightClick.
127.0.0.100 doubleclick.net
You guys don't get it. Hopefully MS will buy doubleclick and make them THE source for all MS based adds. Instead of the boring old flash, or worse yet, non-interactive dull jpegs, you can now get ads enhanced with all sorts of advanced features. Instead of plain old JPEGs, you can see the glory of the new MS format. You can protect your video ads so they will only play in WiMP11 with DRM user enhancements. Flash? Yestertech, MS has their newer better version.
This will be absolute nirvana! Why? Because they sure as hell won't put out those bullshit DRM infected formats for linux, and I will never have to see their ads again. I won't even have to install a plugin to avoid them. Oh happy day.
-Charlie
Is there anybody left on the planet that isn't blocking DoubleCluck? How on earth can they be viable?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
And it's pretty damn good at it. Spread the word.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Dude, Microsoft bought them, not Best Buy. ;)
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
"The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible."
I thought it said, "Microsoft in Talks to by DoubleCrick"
Everybody know, DoubleCrick my company takeover target!
- Wun Hung Low
Shanghai
I totally agree with what you said. However, there is another angle. People are going to mind seeing all of these things in a web browser, and they're going to use firefox and various plugins to get around them. Yes.
But my guess is Microsoft has more insidious plans. (Don't they always?) They control your desktop, remember? Now imagine instead of those ads popping up in the browser you can pick and control, they pop up on your desktop. They become part of the OS, such that you can't remove them without breaking the system (MS has never claimed this before, right?).
Sure, corporate desktop licenses won't have these; high-dollar corporate licenses will be ad-free. Home desktops, however, will. But just use the corporate desktop, you ask? Except that one won't play games... and will only run Microsoft-signed code, or maybe even code signed with a special corporate key you'd have to buy. Expect to see similar ads appear on XBOX Live! as well.
I encourage Microsoft to do this. They should go all-out and control the desktop experience. It should become like television, where consumers are the product, and getting their eyeballs is the goal. Let them play games or type a letter, but make sure those ads appear everywhere.
That way everyone may finally hate it enough to switch.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Doubleclick? Doubleclick, it seems I've heard that before. Where could I have...wait! Got it.
It is in my adblock list, right next to atdmt, linksynergy, and other vile purveyors of loose green baby crap. Boy, that takes me back in time, back to when the Spice Girls were popular and 127.0.0.1 was the prefered route for undesirables.
Yeah i'm talking to you. The wannabe computer programmer who thinks they are good at computers because they can click around the computer enough times and find the reboot button and 'fix' an inherently flawed windows system. You think you're cool because you can pirate photoshop but not know anything about it, get Microsoft Office for free but have the literacy of a 1st grader when writing a paper, and get a copy of Norton Anti-virus because your inherently flawed system is useless without Administrative privileges. Get a clue, you are not smart, you are just a corporate sheep for a company that will bury you if you ever tried to write any software that did anything remotely useful. You are a clickaround and all you know if your ugly gray existence that is Windows.
/dev/random > Windows.com
Want the sourcecode to windows vista?
head -n 1000000
Hey! Two great evils that go great together!
Considering the balls-up made when Yahoo bought Overture, I'm really suprised Microsoft are trying this. This is a bad, stupid idea.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
Or why blogs are not journalism:
Bloomberg says the Wall Street Journal says.
Don't you guys see that there is a difference between reading a newspaper and writing one?
..of evil teaming up with evil and working together against good.
...It's going to make absolutely no difference to me. I have every doubleclick server known to mankind blocked in my hosts file. I don't want to know them, and I don't care who buys them.
Everything related to DoubleClick (the click-tracking, spamming bastards), domains, IP ranges, affiliates (MailDart, Dartmail, etc), everything is blocked on every single system I have under my control. And it will never be any different.
A while back Aprimo snatched up DoubleClick's Enterprise Marketing Solution parts. Aprimo is the top dog in their niche of Enterprise Marketing Management solutions.
Definitely some mad money being thrown around with the selling off of DoubleClick.
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.