Google completes DoubleClick purchase

13th March 2008

Google has purchased DoubleClick for $3.1 billion (£6.2 billion) after the European Union cleared the deal earlier this week.

The deal was finalised on Tuesday March 11th, with Google's acquisition of the web advertising company highlighted by commentators as a sign the search giant's influence in the online marketing sphere is set to rise.

Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, said on the company's official blog that redundancies would be likely following the merger.

"DoubleClick gives Google the leading platform for display advertising, enabling us to rapidly bring advances to the market in technology and infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies," said Mr Schmidt.

He added that the merger would make ads more relevant to users, as well as improving page load speed through the associated scale and infrastructure enhancement.

According to comScore, Google received the highest number of unique UK visitors in January.