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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."
To back up all the way to the beginning, a couple of years ago, I got a call from a recruiter about a job with a small local company that was writing some software that would allow people to track advertising campaigns. I interviewed, and felt rather ambivalent about them... they seemed like they were writing decent software, but I'm over the whole startup thing, and spending 80 hours in the office. They passed on me. At the time I was a little upset, even though I wasn't all that interested in them. As my neighbor put it, "It's like when the ugly girl doesn't want to dance with you."
A while later, I saw some of the guys who interviewed me walking around the building I worked in. I checked the building directory, but the company wasn't on the list. So I hit their website, and lo and behold, they'd been bought by Doubleclick.
Whew. Dodged a bullet. I mean, Doubleclick. Yikes. I'm past the point in my life where I can walk out of a job on principle without another job already lined up, and I'm still paranoid from the bust.
So I tell the recruiter all this, and I don't really mince words about my opinion concerning Doubleclick.
He submitted me anyway.
I got a call a couple days later from someone. It was outside normal business hours, and I normally don't answer numbers I don't recognize during my off time, but a good friend of mine was expecting the birth of his son any day, so I answered just in case. I was in a guitar shop at the time, and couldn't hear too well, but they were talking about the opportunity at Doubleclick. I assumed it was another recruiter, so I went into my whole spiel about my history with the other company, how glad I wasn't working for them when they were acquired, and how distasteful I found Doubleclick.
I guess there's really no suspense here. Naturally, the guy I was talking to was the hiring manager over at Doubleclick, and I had just unloaded on him. In fact, I do believe I mentioned being "glad I don't have that stain on my resume."
I felt pretty horrible. It was an accident, and I'm sure the poor guy didn't want to work at Doubleclick any more than I did. But still... in retrospect, it was pretty funny.
Even funnier was the fact that Doubleclick had an office in our building. When I told a coworker the story the following day, she pointed out that, undoubtedly, someone on the second floor was telling the exact same story :)