Google Wooing Other Companies Besides DoubleClick

The Mountain View based company, or should I say giant, has given a "print preview" of its middle-term future to the media, in a statement of its president of advertising and commerce in North America, Tim Armstrong. He said that, for the time being, the Great Search Engine "forays into selling ads in print, radio and television had shown that marketers would be keen to use a joint system that let them better manage ad inventory."

The only problem it is facing right now is that the Double Click deal the company has tried to close is on its way to probably being disallowed in Europe, as the Commission there said that it needed more time to look into the matter, to see whether it was a monopolistic move that would hurt competition or not. United States' lawmakers have also urged closer scrutiny of the deal. However, "we're intent on bringing more and more scale to the digital dashboard space," Armstrong says. "There's a high level of interest and a high level of work that needs to be done. We're very early stage on connecting those businesses. I think this is a two, three, five-year product that we're going to work on."

That's very, very bold a statement, so either he is a really optimistic person, or he knows something that we don't. Either way, he admitted that "We're exploring the ability to basically work with multiple companies in that space."

That's coming off a bit brusque, don't you think? Just a few months ago, they were flying high with DoubleClick and now they're considering other options. "DoubleClick is one piece of it [the way to bridge the market between advertisers who buy commercial space and the publishers who sell that inventory]," he said. "We think the deal should close. We think our competitors have been able to close their deals." Good luck with that.