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Google Buys DoubleClick
April 13, 2007
Google reached an agreement today to purchase DoubleClick for $3.1 billion according to the New York Times. This is a significant accomplishment for Google as Microsoft too was interested in acquiring the display advertising server company.
DoubleClick serves the needs of a variety of advertisers and publishers and is the leader in the online ad serving space. While Google has excelled at pay per click advertising they have not done so well in display advertising as in the display ad world, existing relationships are an important component of sales.
Google now has access to top publishers and advertisers and has the top relationships in the market.
The search engine leader will also be able to take advantage of the DoubleClick’s recently debuted advertising exchange which is similar to Google Adwords for display advertising.
It is possible this new exchange can be linked into the network of advertising services Google already offers allowing advertisers to manage display ads and ppc ads via a single unified interface.
The barrier to entry for others to compete in these spaces has become even more significant as Google now owns the lion’s share of ppc and display advertising relationships.
The single downside to this deal may be with DoubleClick customers which consist of advertisers, ad agencies and publishers. The latter two see Google as a potential threat and may decide it makes sense to migrate their advertising programs to another provider to avoid enriching what they view as one of their primary competitors.
However it is too soon to see if this will indeed happen. Over the course of the next few months we will get to see how Google manages this transition and what assurances it makes to existing DoubleClick customers to stop any potential defection.
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Cisco Invest $700M in China
April 13, 2007
Cisco Systems plans on sponsoring 40 Chinese companies with a venture fund worth a total of $700 million. Investment in China is not new but this move could have implications as to where tomorrow’s technology leaders will come from. This article has more details.
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Oracle CRM
April 13, 2007
Oracle obviously knows a thing or two about CRM and with their recent acquisition of Siebel Systems they are even more firmly entrenched in the space than ever. The company has a recent white paper designed to help users get the most out of their CRM initiatives including mining the data in every company more effectively.
In addition there is talk in this document about using on-demand customer relationship management systems in your corporation. It is refreshing to see virtually every company I come in contact with pushing hosted solutions such as hosted CRM.
The content is in an easy to read and digest format and is worth a read. Here is an article with more detail and a link to the white paper, Delivering Actionable Insight Into Sales.
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New 8x8 Patent
April 13, 2007
8x8 the parent company of Packet8 announced today they have been awarded U.S. Patent No. 7,202,884 which focuses on the processing of images from a communications system to a computing system. This patent is important as technology companies need a strong patent portfolio to protect against being sued by other companies with patents they could potentially infringing upon.
The company’s patent portfolio is now up to a total of 67 for 8x8. This is a great number relative to the company’s size. With all the patent lawsuits (Verizon, Sprint) against Vonage, it is good to see 8x8 is forging ahead by adding to its growing patent portfolio. This should afford them a great deal of protection from being sued but of course it is not a bullet-proof vest.
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Vonage CEO Shuffle
April 13, 2007
I know I have been writing about Vonage a great deal lately and I am not sure whether to apologize about this fact or not but it is worth pointing out that Vonage and Sprint may reach some sort of business arrangement as a result of their patent dispute according to one of my favorite Canadian telecom analysts Jon Arnold.
In addition customer, according to Jon's blog ARPU isn’t expected to go up or down which Jon sees as bad news. Well at least it isn’t expected to go down. There is still pricing pressure on the market and Vonage hasn’t rolled out any must-have paid services lately. Hopefully they have some up their sleeve and can get that ARPU to steadily increase.
Garett Smith has comments on yesterday's Vonage conference call as well – specifically – who would want this Vonage CEO job? Like I said a bit earlier today – this company is becoming one of the most famous tech brands in the US. You should be able to leverage this to make a profitable company. The question is who can do this best. The answer hopefully for Vonage shareholders will be Jeffrey Citron.
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