Google Seals DoubleClick Deal, Learns More About You

Google finalized its $3.1 billion purchase of ad-delivery giant DoubleClick Tuesday after European Union regulators ruled that the purchase does not violate anti-monopoly rules in Europe, which removed the last legal hurdle for the hotly contested acquisition. … DoubleClick is an ad serving and management company that Web publishers use to display and target visual and rich-media advertising. The technology uses a DoubleClick cookie that reports back every time a user visits a site using the system, letting DoubleClick know that user 453689 likes to read motocross stories and GQ magazine and spends a lot of time playing online Flash games. Google can merge that database with its deep knowledge of users’ search histories, along with its growing database of URLs visited by Google users who don’t realize that Google opts-in users to its “Web History” program, which continually tracks their every step on the Internet.

So what does the purchase mean for citizens on the Web?

Read the rest of this post