14 DAY TRIAL // It's a dog eat dog and a search-engine-eat-search-engine world out there, and Microsoft has taken it one step further in its face off with Google. Both the Redmond and the Mountain View companies have made extensive acquisitions in 2007 designed to anchor them as leaders on the online advertising market. Initially, Google announced a proposed merger with DoubleClick, and then Microsoft responded with the purchase of aQuantive. But although Google was the first to reveal the acquisition of DoubleClick, Microsoft managed to wrap up the details of the aQuantive purchase at the beginning of August and created the Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group. The new Microsoft business group - resulted from swallowing aQuantive - will be responsible with the creation of the company's monetization engine addressing both advertisers and publishers.
However, while Microsoft goes on with its advertising business, it will not permit Google to do the same. In mid April, following the news of Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, a deal that Microsoft missed, Brad Smith, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, commented that the "proposed acquisition raises serious competition and privacy concerns in that it gives the Google DoubleClick combination unprecedented control in the delivery of online advertising, and access to a huge amount of consumer information by tracking what customers do online. We think this merger deserves close scrutiny from regulatory authorities to ensure a competitive online advertising market."
Of course the Redmond company is not all talk and no play. First off, Microsoft dropped a whooping $6 billion on aQuantive to top Google's $3.1 billion for DoubleClick. In addition, the Mountain View search giant will have Microsoft's dogs all over it. The Redmond company hired Patton Boggs in an initiative to lobby the monopoly authorities against Google's acquisitions of DoubleClick. No official statement was made on Microsoft's behalf on the Patton Boggs lobbying against Google, but the company position remains unchanged, revealing that its rival advertising deal requires a close review.