Could Google-DoubleClick Merger be Halted? - Microsoft's Self-Interest
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Microsoft has some very good reasons for trying to throw a monkey wrench into Google's purchase of DoubleClick. When it completed its purchase of aQuantive about a month ago, it entered the advertising arena in a big way. Advertising is outside of Microsoft's core competence, but Google specializes in it. Microsoft will do anything it can to slow down the search engine behemoth.
Just consider the stance revealed by this quote from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, made at the company's financial analyst meeting in July. "We are hell-bent and determined to allocate the talent, the resources, the money, the innovation, to absolutely become a powerhouse in the ad business." He even portrayed his company's smaller footprint in the advertising business as an advantage. "This is a chance to invest in, or to reinvent and rethink the whole business model of online advertising," he noted.
Interestingly, the system on the drawing board at Microsoft might end up being more invasive than Google's. Called "conversion attribution," the New York Times noted that the system "would track all of the online places where consumers see ads and give advertisers a fuller picture of the various ways that consumers reach them." Brian McAndrews, who joined Microsoft along with aQuantive and heads up Microsoft's new advertising and publisher solutions group, thinks the system will show that Internet searches and online advertising are not nearly as closely connected as believed.
While that would be good for Microsoft, the tracking system may raise more than a few eyebrows. It can give advertisers a log of all the places on the Internet where web surfers see ads before going to an advertiser's web site. The data is based on individual computers' electronic signatures. That's not the same thing as basing it on individual people -- unless, of course, it happens that only one person uses a particular computer. Despite the many shared computers in both offices and households, this situation is fairly common. If Microsoft is concerned with threats to consumer privacy online as a result of the Google-DoubleClick deal going through, one must wonder what it is doing itself to safeguard the privacy of these consumers.
Next: Google's Case and Other Concerns >>
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