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Google Plans To Sell Part of DoubleClick
mudimba writes "Google has announced that they will be selling the search engine marketing branch of recently acquired company DoubleClick. Google's reason for the sale is that they do not want to appear to be giving preferential treatment in search rankings to DoubleClick customers. Tom Phillips, director of Google's integration with DoubleClick, said, 'Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google's mission and core to the trust we ask from our users.' Google was under scrutiny from the European Union and the FTC over their purchase of DoubleClick, but both eventually approved the deal."
Google are also planning to cut hundreds of jobs at doubeclick
Of COURSE it's about money, but that doesn't mean it's not ALSO about morality!
The bean counters create a probability curve to estimate how much revenue they could lose if the perception were to become that GOOG is manipulating their results and giving preference to the customers paying DC for search engine marketing.
That is, how much would they lose by looking amoral.
Subtract that from the projected revenue from that DC unit.
If the number is negative on most points in the probability curve, then it's a no-brainer.
But even if it's in the "barely positive" territory, say, less than $10MM a year, I could still see an enlightened manager, thinking of that motto, making the decision to forgo that marginal revenue to maintain brand cachet that is difficult to value but that could be negatively impacted by the perception of conflict of interest.
So, certainly, it's an issue about money. But that doesn't preclude accounting for the morality of it.
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and can now preview this comment...
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Nope.
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Done