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Businesses The Almighty Buck IT

DoubleClick On The Blocks? 198

Posted by Hemos from the just-desserts dept.
A reader writes: "Many sources report that DoubleClick - the world's leading supplier of cookies - may be up for sale. " There's also an AP report out as well. The online advertising market has been hard lately - but there's also been a widespread perception that DoubleClick has been resting on their laurels.
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DoubleClick On The Blocks? More

DoubleClick On The Blocks?

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  • I'm rich, I'm rich! (Score:5, Funny)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:09PM (#10687285)
    I'm not only one of the most hated businesses on the web, I'm also rich, and going to become a hell of a lot richer! Woo!

    Server: 127.0.0.1
    Address: 127.0.0.1#53

    Non-authoritative answer:
    Name: doubleclick.net
    Address: 127.0.0.1

  • New ads running on DoubleClick (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:09PM (#10687288)
    Punch The Monkey If You Want To Buy Doubleclick!

  • Microsoft (Score:3, Funny)

    by synthparadox ( 770735 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:09PM (#10687290) Homepage
    Can't wait for Microsoft to buy out DoubleClick and TAKE OVER THE WORLD! :P

  • Laurels? (Score:4, Funny)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) * on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:10PM (#10687316) Homepage
    "DoubleClick has been resting on their laurels"

    If by "resting on their laurels" you mean "Need to be taken out back of the Interweb and beaten to within an inch of their lives. Twice." then by all means: rest away.

    • outrageous expiration date cookies (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:51PM (#10688004)
      "Need to be taken out back of the Interweb and beaten to within an inch of their lives. Twice."

      Make that three- they (and many other advertisers and other sites) needlessly set cookie expiration dates to 2040 and whatnot; I wouldn't mind it so much if they didn't collect like a plague; every few weeks I go through my cookie list and there are literally thousands of cookies from a hundred different advertisers all set to expire in a zillion years. It's absurd, and clearly they don't get it- these cookies should have an expiration of maybe one year at the absolute most. A month or so should be fine in most cases.

      I think someone should write a plugin for the various free browsers that punishes bad cookie lifetime params- maybe it inversely sets the actual expiration date in an inverse fashion if the requested date is too far off. For example, over a year, start actually going back down for each year they add. So a cookie marked good until 2040 will actually be good for about a few hours- or less.

      Users will bitch, site developers will be forced to look at why it's happening, and the answer from the internet community will be "set more reasonable cookie expiration dates and it won't happen". They'll be in the uncomfortable position of trying to explain why they need such long dates.

      Either that or simply allow the user to set a maximum cookie retention time. What I'd REALLY like is a browser that doesn't save cookies for sites I haven't bookmarked, or combine the ideas- cookies for sites not bookmarked aren't saved very long.

      • Hmmmm.... Could we sue them if the cookies get stale? Is that a public health risk? BTW, if they are the largest supplier of cookies, why don't I see them in Safeway?
      • Now if someone could transfrom these interesting thoughts into a Firefox extension this world would be a little bit better...

      • Firefox (Score:3, Interesting)

        by sremick ( 91371 )
        Firefox lets you selectively block certain sites from setting cookies. I don't let Doubleclick set ANY cookies EVER on my computers. In fact, the only sites that DO get to are the ones where I shop at, or I use logins. Every time a site tries to set one I get a popup allowing me to deny it. On a new install there'll be a lot of these but as the block list gets populated with the major advertisers it calms down and now I don't see them very often. And I'd rather see the occasional notification than let these

        • Re:Firefox (Score:3, Informative)

          by igrp ( 732252 )
          I do something similar. I use Firefox's Cookieculler [mozdev.org] extension.

          It basically allows you to mark certain cookies as "protected". Now, if you don't want to keep track of what cookies you need (ie. you expect your browser to handle the cookie management instead of doing it yourself), you just set those few cookies that you need (in my case that's Gmail, Ebay, Slashdot, Amazon and a select few semi-trusted sites) as "protected". Then you enable cookies. At the end of the day, you pull up the Cookieculler dialog

      • Either that or simply allow the user to set a maximum cookie retention time. What I'd REALLY like is a browser that doesn't save cookies for sites I haven't bookmarked, or combine the ideas- cookies for sites not bookmarked aren't saved very long.

        Mozilla already lets you set a max lifetime for cookies. (Mine is set at two weeks.) However, the link to the bookmarks idea is even better.

      • Make that three- they (and many other advertisers and other sites) needlessly set cookie expiration dates to 2040 and whatnot; I wouldn't mind it so much if they didn't collect like a plague; every few weeks I go through my cookie list and there are literally thousands of cookies from a hundred different advertisers all set to expire in a zillion years.

        Are you stuck using a bad browser policy or something?

        I know in Mozilla I can set it to not accept cookies unless I allow for the domain. Once I've said

      • I think someone should write a plugin for the various free browsers that punishes bad cookie lifetime params- maybe it inversely sets the actual expiration date in an inverse fashion if the requested date is too far off. For example, over a year, start actually going back down for each year they add. So a cookie marked good until 2040 will actually be good for about a few hours- or less.

        Sod that, how about a cookie filter that instantly nukes any cookies set for 2040, and warns you about cookies with un

    • Re:Laurels? (Score:5, Funny)

      by droleary ( 47999 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @01:09PM (#10688346) Homepage

      Need to be taken out back of the Interweb and beaten to within an inch of their lives.

      On this issue, I think we can all get behind the metric system and beat them within a centimeter of their lives.

    • If you think DoubleClick are bad you've not been keeping up with the online ad industry. DoubleClick are actually one of the least bad networks; unlike most of the rest they haven't yet been caught doing drive-by downloads, exploiting IE security holes to install spyware, and operating endless pop-farms.

    • who used to say ... "I'll take the rascal out back o' the gluey and give 'im a tin ear!"

  • One of many options (Score:5, Informative)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:11PM (#10687340) Homepage
    DoubleClick hired a financial adviser to study options including a sale of part or all of its businesses, a recapitalization, an extraordinary dividend, a share repurchase or a spinoff, pretty much the same thing any company will do, especially when its earnings are better than expected.

    Its 3rd-quarter earnings was $15million, up from $6.3million last year, and fourth-quarter forecast is $72 million. So I don't think DoubleClick is going through a rough patch.

    • Re:One of many options (Score:3, Informative)

      by jfengel ( 409917 )
      In fact, with more cash than debt, and a price-to-earnings ratio of 31, that's actually not an entirely bad bet. Buy a share of DCLK for $7.20 and you're buying $4.50 in book value and perhaps $.25 a year in earnings.

      I wouldn't buy it since I don't invest in companies I don't like, but purely on the basis of the numbers this is a solvent and profitable company. I don't think that their earnings are likely to increase enough to justify the P/E of 30, because I think that more Firefox and less IE will decr

  • Cookies? (Score:5, Funny)

    by TildeMan ( 472701 ) <gsivekNO@SPAMmit.edu> on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:12PM (#10687352) Homepage
    If they really are the leading supplier of cookies, I think this is a golden opportunity for Girl Scouts of America to buy them out. Imagine the possibilities for increased profits!

    I wish I could download a Samoa or two now...
    • I wish I could download a Samoa or two now...

      Yeah, but they'd come downloaded with razor blades or pins and you'd have to buy "special spyware blocking software" to remove it.

  • 127.0.0.1 doubleclick.* (Score:5, Informative)

    by Underholdning ( 758194 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:13PM (#10687374) Homepage Journal
    Doubleclick was the very first host I mapped to 127.0.0.1 in my host file when web ads started to appear. I wonder how many people actully did that? I know that most of my co workers did it - even those that didn't know what it meant.
    " It also lowered its fourth-quarter earnings forecast to $72 million to $77 million"
    Obviously, not many, since they can make that kind of money.

    • Re:127.0.0.1 doubleclick.* (Score:5, Informative)

      by thedillybar ( 677116 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:21PM (#10687504)
      >Doubleclick was the very first host I mapped to 127.0.0.1

      What about those damned websites that won't let you "Continue" until all the ads on the page have loaded (e.g. javascript)? I used the hosts file for a while; when this became an issue I switched to Firefox's Adblock Extension [mozdev.org].

    • Re:127.0.0.1 doubleclick.* (Score:4, Funny)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:25PM (#10687564)
      Doubleclick was the very first host I mapped to 127.0.0.1 in my host file when web ads started to appear.

      But even then, think about it: each time you hit a page with a link to some doubleclick url, you end up hitting port 80 of your own machine. That's right, even with doubleclick.com disabled, Doubleclick, Inc. manages to make you DoS yourself!

      Talk about an evil company...

      • Re:127.0.0.1 doubleclick.* (Score:5, Informative)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:41PM (#10687846) Homepage
        But even then, think about it: each time you hit a page with a link to some doubleclick url, you end up hitting port 80 of your own machine

        Which is why the smarter ones amongst us mapped it (and numerous others) to 0.0.0.0 instead. I've yet to find a single IP stack where that isn't the network equivalent of /dev/null.

        • Which is why the smarter ones amongst us mapped it (and numerous others) to 0.0.0.0 instead. I've yet to find a single IP stack where that isn't the network equivalent of /dev/null.

          No, that's my IP address, you insensitive clod!

          Ahem. :-)

        • 0.0.0.0 (Score:3, Informative)

          by Jayfar ( 630313 )
          Which is why the smarter ones amongst us mapped it (and numerous others) to 0.0.0.0 instead. I've yet to find a single IP stack where that isn't the network equivalent of /dev/null.

          Except for a tcp stack derived from an ancient BSD that instead uses 0.0.0.0 as the broadcast address.

          http://www.kbalertz.com/kb_108783.aspx [kbalertz.com]

        • Re:127.0.0.1 doubleclick.* (Score:2, Interesting)

          by zeet ( 70981 )
          voip01:~# ping -c 4 0.0.0.0
          PING 0.0.0.0 (127.0.0.1) from 127.0.0.1 : 56(84) bytes of data.
          64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.052 ms
          64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.014 ms
          64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.013 ms
          64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.013 ms

          --- 0.0.0.0 ping statistics ---
          4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% loss, time 2997ms
          rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.013/0.023/0.052/0.016 ms
          voip01:~# uname -a
          Linux voip01 2.4.26-1-686-smp #1 SMP Sun May

        • Yep, mapping to 0.0.0.0 is the trick. I did this to *.doubleclick.net and 18,000+ other crapservers.

          Anybody want me to post my hosts file online?

        • Which is why the smarter ones amongst us mapped it (and numerous others) to 0.0.0.0 instead. I've yet to find a single IP stack where that isn't the network equivalent of /dev/null.
          Unfortunately, many web browsers give a pop up error message when you map them to 0.0.0.0, which makes the solution more painful than the problem. Yeah, it's the browser that's broken, but until people start fixing the browsers, 127.0.0.1 is a better choice.

  • Bake sale! (Score:2, Redundant)

    by cmburns69 ( 169686 )
    "DoubleClick - the world's leading supplier of cookie"

    So they finally acquired Mrs. Fields Cookies [mrsfields.com]? That ough to be one heck of a bake sale!

  • Double Click is a dinosaur (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Whammy666 ( 589169 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:15PM (#10687403) Homepage
    Thank god for Firefox and ad-block. Doubleclick and it's clones are no longer an issue for me. I would hope that the demise of doubleclick and its obnoxious marketing would serve as a warning to others who would emulate its business model.

  • WHA?! (Score:2, Troll)

    by clinko ( 232501 )
    Christ, Microsoft put a pop-up blocker in to stop this company.

    Who would have thought it would have hurt their business plan.

    Microsoft would never hurt another company...

  • everybody now! (Score:2, Redundant)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 )
    Sing along! C is for cookie, it food enough for me! I dont think i can complain about being given free cookies when i am online. A company that gives out cookies must be good.

  • I block double-click because... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Air-conditioned cowh ( 552882 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:24PM (#10687551)
    It's just sooooo sllllloooowwwww.

    Any page with doubleclick ads on it seems to get held up waiting for doubleclick's servers to do anything.

    The words "Waiting for... blah.blah.doubleclick.blah" or similar used to be old friends, until I discovered the hosts file :)
    • I've noticed some delays with mike's ad blocking hosts file. Why the hell would a web page struggle loading of some external image? Yuck.

      What i've noticed is that 90% of the sites I visit for some reason need to visit falkag.net(or something with a name similar to that).

  • Wrong metaphor (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:26PM (#10687578)
    It would be "Is Doubleclick on the block"? Meaning, the auction block or potentially the chopping block. "On blocks" refers to rusting cars in somebody's front yard. Jeez, is even the Slashdot editing being farmed out overseas?

  • An anonymous invester... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jmcmunn ( 307798 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:28PM (#10687619)
    An anonymous investor, identified only as "C.M." was said to have put in a bid for $30 billion dollars to buy out DoubleClick today. Experts believe C.M. may have a personal agenda for buying DoubleClick, but could not speculate as to his reasons.

    The anonymous investor was quoted as saying "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me."

  • Google adwords probably are better anyway (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:32PM (#10687706) Homepage
    Google is a much bigger company, with a bigger pull for those that want to advertise. They also probably target their ads better than doubleclick. Oh and Google's motto is "do no evil" not "all your personal information are belong to us."

    It's easy to see why Google would have a superior position in the market now. Better technology, bigger reach and a more honorable policy toward Internet users.

  • Might be bying, but is was doing business (Score:3, Informative)

    by FerretFrottage ( 714136 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:36PM (#10687768)
    My cousin is a salemen for doubleclick (hey don't DoS me, I'm just passing on some info). When he took the job, I told him he was working for one of the top ten internet public enemies, but sales are his thing and doubleclick did generate sales. I don't recall thhe exact figures he quoted me a few months back, but the number of doubleclick related ads on the web was well into the billions (not hard to believe) so even relatively few sales generated via doubleclick translated into $$$ for them.

  • Privacy (Score:5, Funny)

    by beekr ( 561659 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @12:38PM (#10687797)
    My biggest concern is how privacy rights will survive a transfer of ownership.

    What if some unscrupulous entity were to purchase Doubleclick?

    What would happen to the millions of peoples' personal data that Doubleclick owns?

    Who could guarantee that it would remain secure, and not fall into the wrong hands?

    Oh, wait...

    • There are ways a person could have been proactive to prevent any meaningful DoubleClick tracking. You could delete your cookies causing a new Doubleclick tracker every time, you could download a special opt-out [doubleclick.com] cookie directly from DoubleClick that would prevent tracking to begin with (so they say), or simply point them to localhost in your hosts file. The disadvantage for the tin foils hats is how do you see what information they actually do have on you? If you downloaded the anti tracking cookie, how
  • Doubleclick bought them years ago. They offered a free hosted form application. You could build forms online. Users enter data, and it's stored in the DB, easy to download/sort/sift.

    Was a really great service. As a 14 year old shareware developer, I loved being able to get registration data via that system. Import it into ClarisWorks database.

    DoubleClick bought and shut that down pretty quck.
  • One of my prayers has been answered! Now to pray no one wants it and it goes into Chapter 7...
  • Good riddance to them - they amount of time I've wasted over the years blocking ads via different methods is astronomical ! - er,well, quite a lot then ;)

    Google have got the right method and thank god for Mozilla and Open Source !

    The right click "block images from this server" I do without even thinking these days - on the odd occassion I have to use iexplore, I find myself right clicking on banners to try to block them and realise how far behind it is as a browser.

    I'd rather they went belly up than get
    • It is very easy to filter ads these days, and without working too much. Just download privoxy [privoxy.org] and configure your browser to use it as a proxy server. If you have to use any cache server such as squid, just chain privoxy to the other server. It works on Windows and Linux and it uses quite a lot of filtering criterias: image size, urls, javascript, window popup blocking, etc. In its default install catches almost any advertising, even if it's not hosted on a previous, known, advertising domain.

  • sp2 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by null-sRc ( 593143 )
    i wonder if this being hit hard thing has anything to do with windows sp2 having ie block popups by default :|

  • I worked at AltaVista in 1999, before the CMGI buyout they were using DC for their banner advertising. AltaVista represented 40% of DC's business and we had difficulty getting ahold of them when we had a question or wanted to talk something over.

    A while later I worked at Evite and those idiots couldn't do ad targeting correctly given a zip code, audience gender breakdown, activity type and gender split. They were serving Pampers ads on bachelor party invites.
  • I haven't seen a doubleclick ad in well over two years now! Thank you Firefox [mozilla.org] and thank you Adblock [mozilla.org]!
  • Too bad DoubleClick isn't on the rocks.
  • All those bazillions of transactions must waste a significant amount of bandwidth.
  • Greetings -

    I understand taking issue with the collection of "personal data," its storage and its usage to target you without your express consent(1). Most of the loudest (and most highly-moderated) voices here seem to have the biggest problems with the Advertisements themselves.

    NB: I nether use DoubleClick as a publisher or am a "fanboy" of them as a company. That said, the protests seem to miss the point that without online advertising - and therefore, DoubleClick - a good portion of the content we have available to us on the web would NOT be available to us on the web for "free."

    This is a minority opinion - and no, I'm not new around here - but what's with all the contempt for a business proposition that lets DoubleClick to make a buck, web publishers to make a buck, and consumers to get content inexpensively or "freely?" Do you find the ads themselves that odious? Do they get in the way of what you're working to achieve in any appreciable way? (non-rhetorical questions)

    Advertising in any medium is 99% horsecrap(2), but it's basically why the media exist: take away the ads and most of your favorite TV & radio shows, magazines, newspapers and web sites will go away. End of story.

    IMO, the backlash seen here is not in proportion to the offense.

    (1) - Users provide implicit concent when they visit sites with advertising run by DCLK or any ad network that'll track them with cookies.

    (2) - And that leaves the ~1% that's actually entertaining and / or informative.
  • DoubleClick - the world's leading supplier of cookies

    And all along I thought it was Mrs. Fields that was the leading supplier of cookies.

  • ...or On the Rocks?
  • Hot cookies for sale!!!
  • At work (a major university in colorado) we null routed doubleclick. Nothing useful comes from their network, so why pass packets to and from it ?
  • Can Double-Click be purchased thru One-Click shopping?
  • doublewho?

    127.0.0.1 dclk.net
    127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net
    127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
    127.0.0.1 ad2.doubleclick.net
    127.0.0.1 ad.ae.doubleclick.net
    127.0.0.1 ad.au.doubleclick.net
    127.0.0.1 ad.be.doubleclick.net
    127.0.0.1 ad.br.doubleclick.net
    127.0.0.1 ad.ca.doubleclick.net
    127.0.0.1 ad.cl.doubleclick.net
    127.0.0.1 ad.cn.doubleclick.net

    etc...

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