Moves show Web ads are alive and clicking
TESS VIGELAND: So with this $25 billion Sallie Mae takeover in the news, a deal worth a little over $3 billion might seem like small fry.But the $3 billion that Google plunked down for the Internet ad company Doubleclick is big fry.Especially for those who remember, oh, three seconds ago, when everybody said Internet advertising was dead.
No, it’s far from dead. In fact, this move has scared multiple players — including Microsoft — into lobbing anti-trust accusations at the deal.Marketplace’s Lisa Napoli explains.
TESS VIGELAND: This isn’t just a case of Google envy. This is about the future of Internet advertising. Who gets to control this increasingly important market is at issue — and some say the deal would give Google 80 percent of it.
Ken Wilbur teaches advertising at the University of Southern California. He says when you add Doubleclick to Google, you could get big trouble.
KEN WILBUR: There are real concerns about creating a dominant position and having potentially anti-competitive effects when you allow one firm to become a monopoly.
Funny that Microsoft and AT&T seem to be leading the anti-trust charge against the Google-Doubleclick deal, since both dominate their particular industries.
Internet advertiser Israel Rothman suggests sour grapes.
ISRAEL ROTHMAN: Microsoft is not the innovative, quick-moving company it was when Bill Gates started it. It’s becoming a lumbering public dinosaur. Everybody’s losing their market share, and Google keeps winning. And this is another step, really in the right direction, for them to get bigger.
And it’s not just on the Internet where you see Google getting bigger. A company also just announced a deal to sell ads for radio giant Clear Channel.
In the meantime, Google’s Internet rivals may be jealous, but they’re not giving up. Today, the one-time search leader, Yahoo, said it’s expanding its collaboration with groups of newspapers. They’re eager to snatch up more of the expanding online-advertising pie.
In Los Angeles, I’m Lisa Napoli for Marketplace.
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