Another month, another string of victories for Google, the internet's emerging superpower. With the most popular search engine and the most efficient system for placing text advertisements alongside the results, Google already dominates the lucrative market for "paid search" advertising (where advertisers pay only for mouse clicks). On April 13th Google announced that it would pay $3.1 billion-making this its biggest acquisition ever-for Doubleclick, the web's largest independent broker between online publishers and advertisers in the market for "branded" or "display" advertisements (where advertisers pay each time the ad is displayed). According to some estimates, this market segment, although smaller, is now growing faster than paid search.
展开▼
