Google completed the acquisition of Doubleclick on March 11, 2008, after more than a year since the initial announcement that it acquires DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. Doubleclick is an ad serving company, with solutions for both advertisers (affiliates) and publishers. However, Google announced today that it split Doubleclick Performics into Affiliate Marketing and Search Marketing businesses, and that it will sell the Search Marketing division. The reason for doing that is obvious, Google wants to avoid being accused of conflict of interest. Why would it be such a conflict? Well the search marketing division has the goal of providing its customers (beside ad management services) seo solutions, meaning they will help their customers rank well on search engines, especially in Google - this contradicts with the principle that Google runs after, so today's decision represents what's morally right. Who is going to buy it and for what price? As they say in the announcement, that remains to be seen:
While we have not yet identified a buyer, we’ve received preliminary interest from a number of our current partners. Search Marketing will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold.
Microsoft wanted a piece of Doubleclick too, so maybe now's the time to make an offer.
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