Here's a good one...

Looks like Microsoft doesn't like Google monopolizing the ad industry. Google is in process of conducting a $3.1 billion buyout of DoubleClick Inc. advertising company. Kinda ironic that M$ is attempting to dissuade another potential monopoly-like situation.

Read story here.

Microsoft hypocrisy:

quoted from article:

Microsoft and Google had been in a bidding war for New York-based DoubleClick, which helps its customers place and track online ads, including search ads.

If M$ can't have DoubleClick, they don't want Google to have it either—such hypocracy. M$ also claims that google would gain access to a huge amount of consumer information.

Ha! If M$ had gotten DoubleClick, it would be the same thing. But, I guess it's better for M$ to have access to info rather than for Google to have the info <sarcasm >

I don't care who gets DoubleClick. I hate waiting for their silly little interactive ads anyway and I'm running on a fast DSL connection. They just stall the page content I'm waiting to see. I don't know how many mainline sites are timing out waiting for DoubleClick's cool presentations to load, but it's a lot of 'em.

I do know their server delivery strength is obviously weak and over-taxed. All the techno-ads appear great on paper when you have a mob of ignorant sales personnel pounding the marketing Execs relentlessly to join their program.

My take: It's overrated and can be easily eclipsed. Google and Microsoft just want the customer base. They can toss the technology.

Yes, I hate those flash ads too; all animated and in your face. Quite annoying. Google should just stick to regular adsense ads and think about allowing more customizations in format (controls for font size and font family settings, ad width/height sizing, and providing Perl scripts to run via SSI to serve up text ads—that sort of thing) for adsense publishers. We don't need any more flash garbage.

I'm sure google is after the customer base and Microsoft knows that. I just found it hypocritical that M$ would try to block google from buying Double-Irritant-Click. It was an amusing tid-bit of info.

The Flash thingy is a market place fad with webpage design for clients. There is a very, very huge amount of marketing hype on the Internet for the 'looking good' ego thingy with clients. However, it is a myth that 'looking good' approach has a better payoff than solid SEO engineering plus SEM research. Most Internet SEO offers are about providing services whether as we offer SEO CMS software plus SEM consulting as combined service - this is future for consistent high payoffs.

Hi - I new to this forum but I have been struggling with this client issue of what I have traditionally named as "the glossary report" syndrome. I've been doing IT projects for over 30 year with very large clients. Client mostly ask for a plain vanilla product but expect a deluxe, glossy, "looking good" version for the same price - this is a tiring dialog that misses how the real world point. So I always looked for some real world leverage to find a $ benefit for all this hype so that my outcome make some kind of a contribution.

In a discussion with my small network of SEO/SEM friends we did find that images get lower click rate but as a percentage the $ conversion rate seem to be higher than text. However, in the real world the SEO interface is still where most of the $ action is. Thus, we do the Flash thingy for paying clients but we stress the SEO keyword to detailed description text relationships and their keyword density and consistence in our projects and software work - first.

The trouble is that when everything is flashing and moving, it all becomes a mish-mosh of ad goop. It becomes so intrusive I want to uninstall flash. I know sites need to run ads to keep running and I can appreciate that. However, there needs to be a line of balance with the irritant factor and some/many of those flash ads are quite irritating.

Quite a number of them do not even allow a person to turn off looping. They keep moving and moving to the point where I cannot read what I came to the page to read. Ads should not have that much garbage animation going on. Flash has it's place, but not much in the ad world. Keep the image ads simple with very little to no animation.

Much as we'd like to get rid of Flash, it's here to stay. Ad's are not only going to get more flashier but a hell of a lot more intrusive with embedded code to secretly gather if not alter info in your computer.

Inadvertently, this will open a whole new market, "anti-flashware" and a new battle of softwares will begin.

You cannot stop change, but you can certainly try to slow it down

Don't think flash can access the computer to alter info on it.

If flash ads got that bad, I'd be forced to uninstall flash from the browser. That would be a shame too, 'cause I know flash can also be useful when not abused.

Don't think flash can access the computer to alter info on it.

Not yet. But I'm sure Bill will probably leave some loop holes in M$ for hack enthusiasts to figure out a way to exploit it. Besides, that's been his trademark since day one. Ever wonder why he still doesn't secure the registry from exploitation? Why change now?

I'd be forced to uninstall flash from the browser.

Lets hope it'll still be as easy as going to "Add/Remove Programs" in the future rather than being forced to go through some website for removal instructions.

Any software running under M$ is bound to be exploited/re-engineered to prove some point to Bill and/or the manufacturer. Ironically, the software re-engineers only seem to fuel the M$ empire even more.

If that's not part of globalization, I don't know what is.