Google expected dMarc founders to leave
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(InfoWorld) - The departure of dMarc Broadcasting's co-founders from Google Inc. surprised many industry observers but not Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt. Speaking Tuesday at the 2007 Bear Stearns Media Conference in Palm Beach, Florida, Schmidt said that Google expected dMarc co-founders Chad Steelberg and his brother Ryan Steelberg to move on at some point afterÂ Google acquired the radio advertising company last year. "The founders, who are entrepreneurs, have gone off to do their next company, which is what we expected them [to do]. They're very good and we wish them well," Schmidt said. Google didn't announce that Chad, dMarc's chairman and CEO, and Ryan, dMarc's president, had left the company, butÂ confirmed it after the news leaked out. MediaPost Publications reported it first on Feb. 9, saying also that the brothers had left unhappy over differences regarding Google's radio ad strategy. Google handled the matter quite tersely, refusing to say when the Steelbergs had left and whether they had resigned or been fired. This fueled speculation that the separation had been unfriendly and that Google is having trouble articulating a coherent plan to push into radio advertising. On Tuesday, Schmidt said Google continues using the dMarc system to place radio ads in smaller markets, while negotiating "larger distribution deals." Google paid $102 million in cash for all outstanding equity interests in dMarc, and agreed to make up to $1.136 billion in additional payments when and if certain performance goals were met. Google generates 99 percent of its revenue from online ads, primarily the pay-per-click ones it serves up along with its search engine results and on third-party Web sites. Its overwhelming reliance on this particular type of ad is seen by experts as a risk, and the company has been trying to diversify into other types of online ads, like banners and video, and into offline ads, like radio, print and television. In television, Google is conducting "a couple" of ad insertion trials, and trying to measure whether its ad system provides incremental value over the medium's traditional system of placing and targeting ads, he said. "If those trials are successful, we will expand," Schmidt said. In pursuing other ad markets, Google's approach is to apply the targeting method that has worked so well for it in pay-per-click ads. In those, Google serves up ads that are thematically related to the user's search-engine query or to the content of a third-party site. Despite its eye-popping revenue and profit growth in recent years, Google isn't close to having perfected its ad targeting system, Schmidt said. "We're nowhere near any sort of limit in that area," he said. In fact, Google's key competitive front is ad-targeting technology from companies that come up with new or improved approaches, Schmidt said. "The advertising story I'm telling you now isn't a secret anymore. People have studied what we've done and they understand it," he said, adding that applying its targeting technology to the mobile space is key for Google. On a related note, Google hasn't felt any adverse impact fromÂ the new pay-per-click ad system rival Yahoo Inc. rolled out recently, Schmidt said. Schmidt also said that Google's new Checkout online transaction and payment service could in the future strengthen the company's plans for cost-per-action (CPA) ads. While in pay-per-click ads, advertisers pay whenever someone clicks on their ads, with CPA they only pay when users perform a specific action after clicking on the ad, like making an actual purchase. Â
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Will Google pick up where Apple left off?
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Web search leader Google Inc.  on Thursday said the head of its Web log service, Blogger, will leave at the end of the week to pursue other interests.
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The co-founder of Blogger, one of the original Weblogging services and now owned by Google Inc., is leaving the company by the end of the week.
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The plaintiff in a long-running  trademark infringement lawsuit against Google Inc   agreed on Friday to drop its case targeting the Web search  advertising leader&#39;s core business, according to court filings.
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The Microsoft executive who had led the effort to close the gap on Google is leaving the company.
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Google Inc. co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin each plan to sell up to 7.2 million shares of their stock in the online search engine leader during the next 18 months &#151; divestitures that would generate windfalls of more than &#36;1 billion apiece at current market prices.
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The two co-founders of Google each plan to sell as many as 7.2 million shares of their stock during the next 18 months, giving them more than $1 billion apiece at current prices.
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Google Inc. cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin each plan to sell up to 7.2 million shares of their stock in the online search engine leader during the next 18 months -- divestitures that would generate windfalls of more than $1 billion apiece at current market prices.
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Execs postponed their IPO after Google backed off previous estimates of how much it would charge for its own IPO. By Larry Greenemeier.
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Oct. 11 issue - When Google first burst on the stock-market scene, the guys running the place sounded like political newcomers attaining public office for the first time and vowing to clean up the place: Mr.
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The company has decided to leave the public markets.
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Google, the world&#39;s most-used Internet search engine, said its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, each plan to sell $1.22 billion in company stock and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt will sell $372.7 million.
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Former Google employees say that the company's founders are concerned about the prevention and extermination of evil.
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U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras is consulting with the agency&#39;s ethics officer to see if she should recuse herself from a review of&#160;Google&#39;s planned acquisition of online ad network DoubleClick.On Wednesday, two technology lobbying organizations called on Majoras to recuse herself, citing her husband&#39;s involvement in the matter. John Majoras is a partner with Jones Day, the law firm that is advising DoubleClick on antitrust issues relating to the US$3.1 billion buyout. Jones Day representatives, including John Majoras, did not immediately return calls seeking comment.Chairman Majoras &quot;has previously recused herself in similar matters for similar reasons where there was a lesser conflict of interest,&quot; representatives of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) wrote in a complaint submitted to the U.S. regulator late Wednesday. &quot;It is clear that she must recuse herself now.&quot;The chairman is now reviewing the matter with the FTC&#39;s chief ethics officer, Christian White, but an FTC spokeswoman on Wednesday downplayed the possible conflict of interest. John Majoras&#39; law firm has not appeared before the FTC in this matter, according to FTC spokeswoman Claudia Farrell. &quot;We learned only yesterday that Jones Day is representing DoubleClick before the European Commission, not the Federal Trade Commission,&quot; she said.Even so, the Jones Day connection may have influenced FTC staffers or the chairman herself, said Jeff Chester, executive director with the CDD. &quot;There&#39;s no question that there&#39;s a stealth set of influences here that could have shaped the staff opinion,&quot; he said. &quot;We do not know what impact it might have on the chairman.&quot;Jones Day is advising DoubleClick on &quot;international and U.S. antitrust and competition law aspects of its planned $3.1 billion acquisition by Google,&quot; the law firm says in a note on its Web site.The deal has come under scrutiny from regulators in the U.S. and Europe who are examining whether it will give Google too much control over the Internet advertising market and too much data on the online behavior of its users.&#160;
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European consumer groups warned the European Commission Thursday that&#160;Google&#39;s plan to take over the online advertising company DoubleClick, currently&#160;under investigation, would&#160;erode consumers&#39; privacy&#160;and would push up prices for online goods and services.In a letter to competition commissioner Neelie Kroes, BEUC, the pan-European Union consumer group, together with three national associations, urged the Commission to use its powers to block the deal in its current form.&quot;Consumers&#39; privacy could be at risk; it is crucial that the Commission integrates privacy concerns into the&#160;Google/DoubleClick merger&#160;review process,&quot; said Monique Goyens, BEUC&#39;s director general in a statement.In addition to privacy concerns, the letter also argued that combined strength of the two Internet firms would harm consumers &quot;with respect to the price, degree of innovation, quality, and selection of online products and services that would likely be available to consumers following the merger.&quot;Neither Google nor the Commission were available to comment.Meanwhile, also on Thursday, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission&#160;cleared Google&#39;s acquisition of DoubleClick&#160;on a 4-1 vote after an eight-month investigation. The FTC concluded that acquisition &quot;is unlikely to substantially lessen competition&quot; and downplayed concerns brought by some privacy groups, saying those concerns are &quot;not unique to Google and DoubleClick,&quot; and &quot;extend to the entire online advertising marketplace.&quot;The Commission&#39;s competition department has until April 2 to decide to permit the deal, approve it on the condition it is changed or prohibit it outright.Competition reviews normally focus on the economic impact of mergers and takeovers, rather than their potential impact on privacy.Consumer groups wrote to Kroes in June, shortly after the planned deal was announced, warning about its impact on privacy. Thursday&#39;s follow-up letter focused on the economic effects of the deal on consumers, as well as reiterating the groups&#39; concerns about privacy.Acknowledging that privacy falls beyond the scope of merger reviews, they nevertheless tried to persuade the Commission to bear it in mind.&quot;Privacy issues raised in our 27 June letter are detrimental to consumers&#39; welfare and ought to be taken into account in the merger review process,&quot; the consumer groups said.Economic harm to consumers would result from the deal because it would strengthen what the groups describe as the super-dominant position of Google in the online advertising industry.&quot;The online advertising market will be placed in jeopardy if the Google/DoubleClick merger is allowed to proceed, because the combined company will dominate both major &#39;pipelines&#39; for online advertising - both the pipeline for search ads and the pipeline for non-search ads,&quot; they wrote to Kroes.&quot;If allowed to proceed, the transaction will enable the world&#39;s largest network for the sale of non-search online advertising (Google) to capture and use to its own benefit the dominant provider of stand-alone ad-serving tools (DoubleClick) used by web publishers to connect other networks to the non-search inventory which they need to survive and which is not already committed to Google,&quot; the letter said.By eliminating competition between the two companies for both stand-alone ad serving tools and integrated ad networks, the deal will ultimately &quot;reinforce Google&#39;s super-dominant position in the market for search ads,&quot; they said.In addition to the possibility of higher prices for consumers, the deal could undermine the common business model for online publishing, which relies on advertising revenue. This could force content providers to switch to a model based around revenue from subscriptions, forcing consumers to pay for what they get free now.&quot;Higher online advertising prices may result in part of the advertising budgets shifting to other media, resulting in less revenue than initially forecasted for web publishers. Such publishers might then be forced to charge users to access content in circumstances where they do not do so today,&quot; the consumer groups warned.&#160;
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SAN JOSE, Calif. - Initial shares of Google Inc...