by Nicholas C Smith - 19 March 2008

DoubleClick, the privately owned online advertising organisation, has been sold to Google for the hefty sum of 3.1 billion dollars (1.5 million pounds). Whilst this is good news for the rapidly expanding Google corporation, fair play may have been thrown out of the window.

Double click provide a digital marketing service, not far removed from Google’s own adwords/adsense technology. So does the largest player in the internet results and advertising game really need DoubleClick?

Well according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt “DoubleClick’s technology is widely adopted by leading advertisers, publishers and agencies, and the combination of the two companies will accelerate the adoption of Google’s innovative advances in display advertising” - Which translated means it is good news for people who use or in the future intend to use Google’s advertising services. Unfortunately for the smaller internet advertising companies around, it is bad news and is likely to be another nail in their Google manufactured coffin. Monopoly, anyone?