
Google to Acquire AdMob for $750 Million - dwynings
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Google-to-Acquire-bw-1950062288.html?x=0&.v=1
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unohoo
Taking into account the admob and gizmo acquisitions, I cant help but admire
google's acquisition strategy. Yes, they have made several acquisitions
(dodgeball,jaiku etc.) only to shelve them later, but a lot of their
acquisitions (doubleclick, analytics, admob) etc. are super strategic moves -
compare this to yahoo's approach over the last few years, which acquired so
many startups only to deadpool or offload majority of them.

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zaidf
Completely agree. Dodgeball/Jaiku and the likes are sooooper tiny compared to
the ones that google has gotten right(YouTube/Urchin/doubleclick). Yahoo can
learn leaps from them. I don't think enough can be said about how good
Google's acquisition strategy is.

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dwynings
<http://www.google.com/press/admob/index.html>

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timdorr
And from the other direction: <http://www.admob.com/google>

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treyp
it's interesting how google's page puts the price right in the first sentence,
but it's nowhere in the admob notice.

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mncaudill
Not sure, but it might be that as a public company, they have to release the
price as it is public information anyway.

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jsm386
Makes perfect sense. A year and a half ago Eric Schmidt said this: _Schmidt
cited the iPhone as the first mobile device with a good web browser and that
more devices will come to market, enabling advertising to become personal,
during an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The CEO predicted that within a few years, mobile advertising would generate
more revenue than advertising on today’s web._

P.S. I wrote about this last week, speculating that the Android platform is
really about expanding the mobile search ad inventory.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=922429>

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pbhjpbhj
I'd say any device running Opera was "the first mobile device with a good web
browser".

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acgourley
So obviously I don't understand this market at all, can someone explain to me
why google couldn't just copy ad-mob's business practices and features?

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eli
They did. Google's been running mobile ads (first in Japan, then worldwide)
since 2006. But AdMob just plain does it better -- nicer interface and
significantly higher CPMs for publishers.

I'm sure they also wanted the talent. I've met one or two of the AdMob guys
and they seem pretty sharp.

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acgourley
Seems like google could have used some of that 750M to operate at a loss, pay
out higher CPMs and attract publishers. It also seems like google could have,
in theory, copied their interface or even improved on it. Could it be that
google's now too big to make those kind of adjustments once it builds the
momentum?

The talent angle of course makes sense, they are both pulling in top tier
employees and removing top tier competition.

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authentic
scenario a: operate at a loss for a while, maybe achieve target (but maybe
not), draw the ire of regulators for anticompetitive behavior

scenario b: spend cash you can easily afford, have an immediate cash flow
return, get a solution that is known to work, eliminate competitive threat
without pissing off anyone in the process while ingesting talent at the same
time

it's fairly easy to see why GOOG chose the latter option.

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acgourley
won't this also draw concern from regulators?

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fcu_1
I predict for AdMob's eCPMs for November to drop sharply against their numbers
for October based solely on their yanking of the IQ quiz SMS subscription
offers (although they do still run some SMS-billing ringtone offers, so their
numbers might not fall too fast). Those types of offers, while perhaps morally
challenged, subsidize a tremendous amount of free content and services for the
rest of us that have enough common sense not to click on them.

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tocomment
The price seems kind of steep for something that puts ads in iPhone apps.
Isn't the whole iPhone app marketplace worth a lot less than 750 million?

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alex_c
The whole mobile advertising market is probably not much bigger than this, but
it's growing, and AdMob is the clear leader. I suspect AdMob would be worth a
lot more than this in a couple of years if left to its own devices, which is
the bet Google is making.

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jfarmer
Eric Schmidt said at one point he thinks mobile advertising will be bigger
than web advertising.

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robk
Nice exit. They had raised $47.2 million in prior rounds, so the multiples
were still very healthy even on the last money in from DFJ.

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prbuckley
This is a pretty impressive exit! I hope this is a sign of more liquidity in
startup land.

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rokhayakebe
IMHO what they bought is not the technology or the team. It's the title
"Leader in mobile advertising". You can't have that when you are Google.

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bham
I wonder what this means for us Adwhirl users.

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FreeRadical
I thought Adwhirl was acquired by AdMob...do you mean if there is a potential
divestment of Adwhirl?

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FreeRadical
Does admob have any significant competitors?

