“The folks at Forbes really understood our business,” said Steve Woit, Founding Publisher of Xconomy, a blog that has become a part of the Forbes network. “A larger network, whether it’s Google or others, has to deal with every industry and large consumer sites.”

Google Inc., the $136 billion advertising and search engine behemoth has become the king of the hill and left other skinny companies looking up from the valleys.  In search, Google takes the lead over Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Live.com.  In software, Google is battling against Microsoft, who uses its dominant operating system as leverage to push their browser and desktop applications.  Google’s YouTubeis competing against a number of media conglomerates that came together to create Hulu, a video site that streams TV shows for free.  Now in advertising, Google will see competition from traditional publication companies, most notably Forbes Inc.

Forbes, the New York City company best known for their magazine publication, started in 1917.  This publication is lists what companies are best to work for and who the richest people in the world are.  The advantage Forbes has is that rich people enjoy reading their magazine.  Rich people also work for companies that have money for advertising campaigns.  It makes sense for Forbes to gain additional revenue by acting as a broker for these rich people to advertise on web sites of interest. 

Starting this Spring, Forbes will be selling advertisements for 400 different financial blogs.  If any of these financial blogs run Google Ads and suddenly switch to Forbes’ platform, obviously Google’s revenue will take a hit.  Now that Google’s advertising firm, DoubleClick has cleared regulations and they spent roughly $3 billion acquiring this firm, I’m sure that they won’t take too kindly to their advertising clients being poached.  After all, the first rule of business is to protect investments.

[Information Source - Associated Press: Media cos. battle Web portals on ads by Anick Jesdanun]

Clipmarks is a New York-based bookmarking tool that allows users to clip the best parts of web pages.  It doesn’t matter whether its a videos, images, or text.  The clippings can be private or public.  ClipSearch is a feature within Clipmarks that allows users to search within the content that is clipped.

VentureBeat ran a story that Forbes Inc. is buying Clipmarks for the use of giving their journalists a tool to find the important parts of given story references.  Roger McNamee, a Director of Forbes wrote that the story was ran a bit prematurely, “but only by a little^[1].”

Forbes has 700 employees and made $78.80 million in revenues at the 2007 fiscal year end.  Forbes directly competes against Dow Jones, which is being acquired by News Corp. for up to $5.6 billion.  Forbes is also rumored to be in the midst of leaving their headquarters to move into an office that will house all of Forbes’ units.  Elevation Partners, an investment company that includes Bono (of rock band, U2) bought 40% stake in Forbes about a year ago.

[1] VentureBeat: Forbes buys social bookmarking site Clipmarks