Yes, it’s not a joke. Google has just bought DoubleClick.
“DoubleClick provides a suite of products that enables agencies, advertisers, and publishers to work efficiently, that will enable Google to extend our ad network and develop deeper relationships with our partners.” (from Google blog)
One more time, Google has beaten Microsoft for this bid. They spent almost twice more than for the acquisition of YouTube last year ($1.65 billion).
I totally agree with Ionut from Google Operating System: “The major Internet player outbid by Google was Microsoft and that was probably the explanation for this huge value paid by Google for the largest and most ungoogly acquisition ever made.”
Windows Vista has been launched on January 30, 2007 for consumers. After two months, we can find some interesting analysis about the impact on the Internet giants.
In my opinion, the main goal for Vista beyond the improvement of security and entertainment is to deploy the Internet strategy of Microsoft. They want to attack Google and this OS is a huge (the last?) opportunity to force Google to put a feet down.
In Vista, you can in a easy way interact with web. Of course, Windows Live Search is the default search engine. So, it’s a huge advantage for MS. We will see in the coming months how people are gonna react to Vista in their daily usage.
At this point, we have an interesting analysis from ReadWriteWeb. It shows with a few graphs that the traffic from Live.com and Msn.com have been increasing since the launch of Windows Vista whereas Google slipped down.
We will keep you updated on this topic
NB: Let’s finish with a geek joke right here .
Viacom has recently sued YouTube and Google for “massive intentional copyright infringement of Viacom’s entertainment properties” and seeks more than $1 billion in damages! Indeed, like on Dailymotion, everybody can watch on YouTube copyrighted video of Viacom such as: The Colbert Report, SouthPark, An inconvenient Truth, The daily Show with Jon Stewards…
The legal aspects
Just a reminder: YouTube is protected under the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (ADMC) of 1998 which has a safe-harbor provision. Indeed, YouTube has to block access to materials once they are notified by copyright holders of specific infringement. Thus, YouTube can not be sued for copyright infringement if they respect this principle; in other words, Google has no duty to monitor its content and the firm is protected from the consequences of its users’ actions. However, Viacom blames YouTube for directly profiting from the availability of popular infringing videos and this point is the main issue of complaint because the safe-harbor is no longer applicable in case of profitability of this video broadcasting. Thus, the outcome of this complaint will be interesting insofar as it will condition the future of video broadcasting via the Internet and the future of Video Platform such as Dailymotion, YouTube, etc.
Google’s Strategy
To anticipate and avoid this kind of complaint, the current strategy of Google is to make contracts with traditional content providers (BBC, NBC, etc) which allow them to provide the content they want and to share advertising incomes with Google. But In exchange, they can not sue YouTube for copyright infringement. We will discuss of this strategy again because its success could have a big impact of this market.
iFilm…
At last, we wonder about the real intent of Viacom. Indeed, iFilm, a Viacom-owned video sharing website also relies on the provisions of the DMCA and meet the same copyright’s issues as YouTube. Thus, if YouTube is violating the law, so is iFilm!