Joe Sinkwitz from the Pay Loan Affiliate Blog has put together a “report card” on Google’s acquisition progress over the years. Not only does he list the date, the company and the type of product or service Google acquired, he scores each acquisition as good, bad or mixed.
Unless you have been living in a cave for the last month, you have no doubt heard of Google’s plan to acquire online advertising company, DoubleClick. Along with that deal, they will acquire search marketing company, Performics which DoubleClick had purchased beforehand in 2004. This has created a stir of controversy among search marketers who are now concerned over the fact that Google owns a search marketing company. Will they embrace it of which there would then be concerns over whether Google would give them preference over other search marketing efforts? Will they sell it to avoid the obvious conflict of interest? Or will they simply shut it down.
I am just barely back in Phoenix after SES New York and what do I see all over the place in my feeds this morning? News that Google has won the acquisition of DoubleClick. The price tag rivals their recent acquisition of YouTube – $3.1 billion in cash! I don’t typically like to rehash news but this is big. So what does this mean for Google advertisers? What does it mean for their competitors? A few summaries from various sources that might provide a clue.
Is Google looking to dominate the world? Many believe so. They certainly have their hands in more things than most people can keep track of. A video entitled “Master Plan – about the power of Google” suggests that not only is Google becoming too powerful but that they have obtained a mass of information on people, disregarding our privacy. The video even suggests that Google is sharing this information with the CIA.
Have you noticed any changes in the way Google search engine results pages look when searching for local businesses? They just announced today the closer integration of maps, address and contact info and even reviews of local business when they detect a local search query. In fact, Google states that we will see this kind of information every time we search for a place, business, or other local information. In addition to providing the basic contact information and map locations for several choices at the top of the page, they will also show ratings and provide one-click access to reviews.
Michael Gray (Graywolf) writes an excellent post highlighting two areas of hypocrisy currently practiced by Google – the nofollow tag and paid reviews by bloggers. He points out that Google is using fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) to corral web publishers to their way of thinking. No doubt that when Google is responsible for 50% or more of your web traffic they can easily bully webmasters into submission.
Google has made some changes to its AdSense policy, some minor but another that may have a major impact on many publishers. Jennifer Slegg provides a detailed run-down of the changes at JenSense. The minor changes deal with their referral program, using images next to ad units, AdSense for search, and copyright material. The bigger change that will impact publishers deals with their Competitive Ads and Services Policy.
Matt Cutts wife is gone on vacation. With that you would think that Matt would be taking it easy but not so. Rather he has been posting like crazy at his blog. Therefore Rand Fishkin thought it might be a good time to ask Matt some specific questions – eleven to be exact. Seeing that Matt was absent from the SES Chicago show last week, possibly Matt would take some time to answer a set of questions that offer multiple choice answers? The answer was yes which produced a nice list of juicy tidbits regarding Google outlook on web sites and search marketing.
This is probably not a surprising headline for most of us who feel that Google is taking over the world. The Raw Story has the details on how Google has just surpassed IBM as the third largest technology company in the world worth a whopping $145 billion. Compare that to IBM’s $139.5 billion valuation and you can see that they have a good lead on them and are now biting at the heels of Cisco and Microsoft who still holds the #1 spot.
Google has released its own Custom Search Engine product which allows users to create their own search engines that reflects their knowledge and interests. What makes this offering different from others such as Rollyo, Eurekster and Yahoo Search Builder? AdSense! Not only can you create a custom engine that searches the URLs you add to it, you can earn money by running AdSense within the search results.
