The pundits have spoken: Chalk up a different win for Google and yet another loss for Microsoft within the bidding war for display-ad vendor DoubleClick. Several industry watchers think Google was wiling to spend a whopping $3.1 billion as much because of its wish to keep DoubleClick out of Microsoft's hands as for DoubleClick's customer and partner lists. And if you thought Microsoft was doomed before inside the online advertising market,
Microsoft Office Professional 2007 Activation, the Redmondians are really toast now thanks to the DoubleClick loss,
Office Pro 2007 Activation Key, some sages are claiming. But what if Microsoft bluffed? What if the Microsoft didn't really want DoubleClick and simply wanted to bid up the price that Google had to pay to make its latest acquisition? I know I might sound like a Microsoft apologist trying to explain the DoubleClick loss. But think this through: If you look at Microsoft's spending patterns, as of late,
Microsoft Office Pro 2007 Product Key, the company is leaning alot more toward doing less-than-$1-billion-sized acquisitions. Within the increasingly rare cases when Microsoft does shell out big bucks (like close to $800 million for TellMe), it's because it envisions the target as a technology acquisition,
Microsoft Office Pro 2007 Activation Key, not an advertising/customer acquisition. Did Microsoft view TellMe as further of a mobile-search purchase or a voice-technology buy? I'd bet the latter…. As Don Dodge,
Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 Activation, director of small business development with Microsoft's Emerging Company Team, blogged: "DoubleClick was a publicly traded company two years ago and valued at less than $1 billion. Anyone could have acquired DoubleClick, but a private equity firm took them private less than two years ago for $1.1 billion. They later sold off two divisions for $525 million. Yesterday Google paid $3.one billion for what remained of DoubleClick. Why did Google wait two years and pay out billions extra?" Sure, Dodge's reasoning could be nothing much more than sour grapes… "Microsoft never really wanted 'em anyway!" What do you believe? Was DoubleClick a Microsoft bluff or a muff?