Google furthered its dominance of the online advertising market this weekend, by announcing a deal to buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion - the largest acquisition in the company's history.The agreement, announced on Friday April 13th 2007, is a disappointment to rivals and fellow takeover hopefuls Microsoft.
Doubleclick and Google now hold a dominant position in the increasingly lucrative world of online advertising and the management of both companies are celebrating the new agreement.
David Rosenblatt, CEO of DoubleClick, declared, "Google is the absolute perfect partner for us."
Mr Rosenblatt went on to say that he warmly anticipates "combining DoubleClick's cutting edge digital solutions for both media buyers and sellers with Google's scale and innovative resources."
Google were similarly glowing in their response to the deal, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt enthusing that "the combination of the two companies will accelerate the adoption of Google's innovative advances in display advertising."
Tim Armstrong, president of Google's North American advertising operations, claimed, "This transaction will strengthen our advertising network by expanding our access to publisher inventory and enabling us to serve the needs of a broader set of advertisers and ad agencies."
Google is in the midst of a corporate activity frenzy designed to extend its influence over e-commerce, and the deal with DoubleClick comes only six months after the world's favourite search engine bought YouTube for $1.65 billion.
