Microsoft buys Aquantive for $6bn

[iago]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6670227.stm

Microsoft has committed to buying the ad firm Aquantive for $6bn. That's 6,000,000,000 dollars! An absolutely ridiculous amount of money. Most suspect, of course, that they're doing this to compete with Google, who just purchased Double Click.

I find it funny that MS and Google both bid for Double Click, and Google ended up winning for $3.1bn. Then Microsoft cried foul, complaining that this would give Google an unfair advantage (and perhaps they're right), then went and spent $6bn on the same thing.

That leads to the question: was Microsoft willing to pay more for a less-known company in an attempt to beat Google at their own game, or was Aquantive actually a better fit and worth the extra money? I'm sure not qualified to answer, but I'm curious about the motives here.

In any case, I really, really don't like the idea of an OS company teaming up with an Ad company. That's gotta be "trouble brewing" if I've ever seen it!

[CrAz3D]

I'm just waiting til Google gets hit with an anti-trust suit...

[Warrior]

Microsoft is a big company who isn't limited strictly for Windows. They could be promoting Windows Live or something.

[Blaze]

I'm just waiting til Google gets hit with an anti-trust suit...

When has google tried to shut down competition?

[Warrior]

I'm just waiting til Google gets hit with an anti-trust suit...

When has google tried to shut down competition?

I agree, you can't sue someone for having a Monopoly. You can sue them for abusing their monopoly.
Not like Google is anywhere near having a monopoly.

[trust]

I'm just waiting til Google gets hit with an anti-trust suit...

Not only has Google not tried to shutdown the competition, they advertise the competition. (Links to have your search done on various other search engines.) I love Google because their whole business is based off of unobtrusive ads, and that allows them to purchase these companies and products and rerelease them free of charge as well as developing their own (free) software.

[Hitmen]

Who is aquantive, and why are they worth almost 3bn more than the omnipresent doubleclick? Wikipedia doesn't have an article on them but turns up a list of advertising agencies, where it says they have a yearly revenue of $250m, which is probably peanuts compared to what doubleclick is pulling down with ads on like 50% of websites that I have ever seen, not even to mention how much google makes from advertising. It seems like an effort in futility on microsoft's part.

[iago]

I'm just waiting til Google gets hit with an anti-trust suit...

That MAY have happened when they bought Doubleclick, but now that MS has stepped up their game I doubt it.

Who is aquantive, and why are they worth almost 3bn more than the omnipresent doubleclick? Wikipedia doesn't have an article on them but turns up a list of advertising agencies, where it says they have a yearly revenue of $250m, which is probably peanuts compared to what doubleclick is pulling down with ads on like 50% of websites that I have ever seen, not even to mention how much google makes from advertising. It seems like an effort in futility on microsoft's part.

They must have a reason. But I sure don't know!