SEO Blog

Google announced on the 14th of April that it has acquired ad software giant DoubleClick for $3.1 billion cash. Google claims that this merger will benefit both advertisers and users. The search community, however, isn’t so sure.

One interesting development is that DoubleClick owns a subsidiary SEO/SEM firm, Performics. Performics does affilliate, SEO, and natural search engine marketing. Now that Google owns it, it’ll be one of the most “natural” SEO’s out there.

It’s not clear what it will do with Performics at this point, but Google says it’s keeping it. Andy Beal suggests it’s a bid to take over the SEO industry. Danny Sullivan says in his comments to this Search Engine Journal article that he thinks Google will have to sell. Google’s ownership of Performics raises too many unfair competition issues.

It’s true the interests of the user, as defined by Google, can sometimes conflict with the interests of the client. The merger raises lots of questions: how would Google balance these two competing interests? Will Performics become the only Google-affiliated SEO firm? And how will that affect the industry?

But Performics isn’t the only issue here. There are also some antitrust and privacy concerns.

Among the first to object to the deal were Microsoft and AT&T, both of which have been anti-trust targets in the past. Both companies are concerned that Google already controls the paid search and contextual ad market, and that the DoubleClick merger will put the competition at a serious disadvantage in the display advertising arena as well.

Time Warner, which owns AOL and Yahoo, are joining Microsoft in calling for closer scrutiny of this deal by antitrust regulators.

Privacy advocates are also raising concerns about the deal. DoubleClick sells DART, software that tracks users’ Internet surfing behavior. Companies use that information to target their ad campaigns. It also offers an ad exchange that connects advertisers with publishers.

Google claims that DoubleClick’s powerful tracking software will help it make its own advertising more relevant and less obtrusive to users, and says it will protect consumer privacy. But the scary thing isn’t what Google says it will do, but what it’s capable of doing.

DoubleClick’s software patents give it the ability to closely track data about where individual users go online, and use that data to target the online ads the users see. Google already collects information every time someone uses the search engine, including the search query and the user’s IP address. DoubleClick’s software will make it extremely easy for Google to keep profiles on individual users’ interests and search habits without their knowledge.

So far, the deal between Google and DoubleClick isn’t 100% solid. Competitors may still file formal objections on antitrust grounds, and it’s likely that regulators will need to take a closer look. It’ll be interesting to see how this works out in the next few weeks.