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Google In Bidding To Buy DoubleClick
A number of readers clued us to the latest development in the saga of te sale of DoubleClick: Google has thrown its hat into the ring against Microsoft and (reportedly) Yahoo and AOL. Most of the stories quote a Wall Street Journal piece that is only available to subscribers. Google's entry into the bidding may boost the price for the remaining pieces of DoubleClick (parts of the company having already been sold off) to $2 billion, twice what its current owners paid for the whole thing. Some reports speculate that this figure could give Microsoft pause.
Google is buying more and more companies that harvest user preference information. With their own service they know what kind of things people are looking for, what people they are in contact with and (if they're so inclined) what topics people discuss, with YouTube they know what kind of entertainment people enjoy to watch and what kind of content interests them, with doubleclick they'd know what "pathes" people take on their way through the WWW.
And to be honest, I don't even have an idea what other companies they scooped up on the road that we didn't even hear about. I'm quite sure a decent profiler has no trouble putting the puzzle together.
So my question is why. At least I know, I wouldn't collect that amount of data just for kicks.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.