When Google brought DoubleClick, the online advertising company, last month for $3.1 billion it was a tactical move on their part which gave them a voluminous control over the $40.9 billion online ad market, which hasn’t gone down too well with their competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft. This was an usual move for Google as this takeover was the largest move the company had made in its nine-year history.

Their has been no effect so far of this acquisition but I do fear it could in the future raise the cost of ad serving for rival intermediaries. I say there has been no effect, but this is not entirely true because last month, Eric Schmidt, the Chairman and CEO of Google announced that there could be a possibility that some jobs may be lost. And true to his word there has been! I read in the New York Times the other day that Google will be reducing the headcount of the American division of DoubleClick by about 25% leaving around 300 employees without jobs or placed into what Google has termed “transitional” roles.

As a search engine optimisation (SEO) company we can see some so very basic conflict of interests going on with this acquisition of DoubleClick. Bundled in with the DoubleClick package, came a company called Performics. Now this is where we can see a problem, because Performics, like us here at White Hat Media, provided search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimisation (SEO) services. As you will already know search engine optimisation (SEO) is a way of raising a websites rankings in search engines like Google for specific keywords.

As Google’s core business is its search engine it seems that Performics – with Google backing – would have inherited an unfair advantage over search engine optimisation (SEO) companies like us. Here at White Hat Media and at most other search engine optimisation agencies, we are in a constant battle with the Google algorithms to help get our clients websites a higher ranking, on their selected keywords, in the Google search engine.

But now we would have to also compete against Google’s own a search engine optimisation (SEO) agency. The reality is how can any SEO company compete against Google as a rival in a race to get a company to the top of GOOGLE? You cant! We might as well pack up our offices now.

But wait……put that photo of your kids back on your desk and switch you monitor back on…….I haven’t finished yet! I have some good news! Google understands this complete conflict of interest and has now decided to split Performics into two separately run business units, which will be Affiliate Marketing and Search Marketing. They have also officially announced they plan to sell off the Search Marketing element…phew I can slept better at night again now! To date Google has already received preliminary interest in their newly established Search Marketing business unit but no sale as of yet. Fingers crossed they sell it soon, in fact I think we here at White Hat Media should buy it – can anyone lend me a few million pounds.

This is a good move for Google because not only does it keep us search engine optimisation (SEO) companies in business but it reinforces Google’s objectivity as a trusted search engine.

Posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 9:35 am in Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.