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 Technology News | April 2007 
Google to Acquire Doubleclick
 Google Media
| | Google announced a change in its privacy policy Wednesday that will anonymize the data stockpiled from Internet Protocol addresses and cookies after an 18 to 24 month period. See story below. (Mark Lennihan/AP) |
Mountain View, CA - Google Inc. announced a definitive agreement to acquire DoubleClick Inc., a global leader in digital marketing technology and services, for $3.1 billion in cash from San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman along with JMI Equity and management. The acquisition will combine DoubleClick's expertise in ad management technology for media buyers and sellers with Google's leading advertising platform and publisher monetization services.
The combination of Google and DoubleClick will offer superior tools for targeting, serving and analyzing online ads of all types, significantly benefiting customers and consumers:
• For users, the combined company will deliver an improved experience on the web, by increasing the relevancy and the quality of the ads they see.
• For online publishers, the combination provides access to new advertisers, which creates a powerful opportunity to monetize their inventory more efficiently.
• For agencies and advertisers, Google and DoubleClick will provide an easy and efficient way to manage both search and display ads in one place. They will be able to optimize their ad spending across different online media using a common set of metrics.
"It has been our vision to make Internet advertising better - less intrusive, more effective, and more useful. Together with DoubleClick, Google will make the Internet more efficient for end users, advertisers, and publishers," said Sergey Brin, Co-Founder & President, Google Technology.
"DoubleClick's technology is widely adopted by leading advertisers, publishers and agencies, and the combination of the two companies will accelerate the adoption of Google's innovative advances in display advertising," said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google.
"This transaction will strengthen our advertising network by expanding our access to publisher inventory and enabling us to serve the needs of a broader set of advertisers and ad agencies," said Tim Armstrong, President, Advertising and Commerce, North America, Google.
"Google is the absolute perfect partner for us," said David Rosenblatt, Chief Executive Officer of DoubleClick. "Combining DoubleClick's cutting edge digital solutions for both media buyers and sellers with Google's scale and innovative resources will bring tremendous value to both our employees and clients."
"When we acquired DoubleClick in July 2005, we saw an opportunity to partner with a great management team to further enhance the company's capabilities and growth trajectory," said Philip Hammarskjold, Managing Director of Hellman & Friedman. "This transaction affirms the successful transformation of DoubleClick, positions the firm for the future, and greatly benefits our investors."
Both companies have approved the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, and is expected to close by the end of the year.
Webcast and Conference Call Information
The company will host a conference call and webcast at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time (5:00 p.m. Eastern Time) today to discuss the acquisition. To access the conference call, please dial 866-288-0543 domestic and 913-312-6664 internationally. A replay of the call will be available until midnight, Friday, April 20, 2007 at 888-203-1112 domestically and 719-457-0820 internationally. Confirmation code for the replay is 8456893. A live audio webcast of the conference call will be available at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html.
About Google Inc: Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
About DoubleClick Inc: DoubleClick is a provider of digital marketing technology and services. The world's top marketers, publishers and agencies utilize DoubleClick's expertise in ad serving, rich media, video, search and affiliate marketing to help them make the most of the digital medium. From its position at the nerve center of digital marketing, DoubleClick provides superior insights and insider knowledge to its customers. Headquartered in New York, and with 17 offices and development hubs and 15 data centers worldwide, the company employs more than 1200 people and delivers billions of digital communications every day. Learn more at www.doubleclick.com
Google Tightens Privacy Measures
Michael Liedtke - Associated Press
Google Inc. is adopting new privacy measures to make it more difficult to connect online search requests with the people making them — a move it believes could prevent showdowns with the government over the often sensitive data.
Under revisions announced late Wednesday, Google promised to wrap a cloak of anonymity around the vast amounts of information that the Mountain View-based company regularly collects about its millions of users around the world.
Google believes it can provide more assurances of privacy by removing key pieces of identifying information from its system every 18 to 24 months. The timetable is designed to comply with a hodgepodge of laws around the world that dictate how long search engines are supposed to retain user information.
Authorities still could demand to review personal information before Google purges it or take legal action seeking to force the company to keep the data beyond the new time limits.
Nevertheless, Google's additional safeguards mark the first time that a major Internet search engine has spelled out precisely how long it will hold onto data that can reveal intimate details about a person's Web surfing habits.
While Google will still retain reams of information about its users, the changes are supposed to lessen the chances that the company, a government agency or another party will be able to identify the people behind specific search requests.
Privacy experts applauded Google's precautions as a major step in the right direction.
"This is an extremely positive development," said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "It's the type of thing we have been advocating for a number of years."
Google is tightening its privacy standards a year after it became embroiled in a high-profile battle over the control of the user information that it had been stockpiling.
While gathering evidence for a case involving online pornography, the U.S. Justice Department subpoenaed the major search engines for lists of search requests made by their users.
While Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and AOL all complied with parts of the legal demand, Google fought the request to protect its users' privacy. A federal judge ordered Google to turn over a small sampling of Web addresses contained in its search index, but decided the company did not have to reveal the search requests sought by the government.
In another demonstration of the privacy risks posed by search engines, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL last summer released 19 million search requests on the Internet as part of a research project. Although only sets of numbers were attached to the requests, the information was used to identify some of the people behind the AOL searches.
AOL subsequently apologized for the lapse, which triggered the resignation of its chief technology officer and the firings of two other workers.
Google and its rivals all say they keep information about their users so they can learn more about them as they strive to deliver the most relevant responses.
By purging some of the personal information from its computers, Google warned it might not be as effective at improving some services as it has been in the past. "But we believe the additional privacy provided by the change outweighs the benefit of the data we are losing," Google said.
The privacy safeguard also could make more people feel more comfortable about relying on Google, an advantage that could help the company widen its already formidable lead in the lucrative search engine market.
Protecting the sanctity of search requests should be a search engine's top priority, said Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group. "You are talking about a potential treasure trove of information," he said. "A person's searches reflect their dreams, hopes and fears."
Under its new standards, Google will wipe out eight bits of the Internet protocol, or IP, address that identifies the origin of specific search requests. After the IP addresses are altered, the information will be linked to clusters consisting of 256 computers instead of just one.
Google also will depersonalize computer "cookies" — hidden files that enable Web sites to track the online preferences and travels of their visitors.
As the owner of the Internet's largest search engine, Google has been under growing pressure to adopt greater privacy controls. Regulators in Europe have been particularly vocal about their concerns.
The new measures pleased Billy Hawkes, Ireland's data protection commissioner.
"It's a very welcome development," Hawkes said. "Personal information should be held on to no longer than it has to be."
Hawkes and other privacy advocates are hoping other search engines will follow Google's lead.
Yahoo, which runs the second largest search engine, was vague about how it might respond.
"Protecting our users' privacy and maintaining their trust is paramount to us," the Sunnyvale-based company said in a statement. "Data retention practices depend largely on the diverse nature of our data as well as the practical considerations of storage costs and processing system requirements." |
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