Microsoft just poached a Google client big time. InterActivCorp is the owner of Ask.com, Excite.com, Expedia.com, Hotwire.com, iWon.com, Live Daily, Match Ticketmaster, TicketWeb, Match.com, Citysearch, and Evite.com. And InterActivCorp just left Google’s DoubleClick and signed with Microsoft’s aQuantive digital ad company subsidiary. Google announced that they were buying DoubleClick for $3.1 billion on April 13, 2007, and Microsoft announced that they were buying aQuantive for $6 billion on May 18, 2007.
“The relationship with IAC is a fairly comprehensive partnership that is, in essence, designed to take advantage of the Atlas Ad Manager technology for IAC publisher sites and manage the full spectrum of their business online in terms of inventory forecasting, analytics, targeting, etc.,” stated Scott Ferris, a senior VP and GM of the publisher and emerging media divisions for aQuantive. “It’s designed to encompass all of the IAC publisher and media property over time.”
Google’s DoubleClick acquisition are still being investigated for potential monopolistic practices. And the acquisition is not quite finalized yet.
