Microsoft just wrote off nearly all of the $6.3 billion it paid for online advertising technology firm aQuantive back in 2007. It’s an admission that the purchase hasn’t worked out well– stark comparison to Google's success with its purchase of DoubleClick back in 2007.
Microsoft announcement:
Microsoft completed its acquisition of aQuantive on Aug. 13, 2007, in an
all-cash transaction valued at just over $6.3 billion. While the
aQuantive acquisition continues to provide tools for Microsoft’s online
advertising efforts, the acquisition did not accelerate growth to the
degree anticipated, contributing to the write down.
I would not count Microsoft out as Bing-powered searches are up according to figures out today from Experian Hitwise add to it that Microsoft said that revenue per search on its Bing search engine is rising.
According to the report on Techcrunch:
Bing-powered searches accounted or 28.12 percent of all
searches for the last month, up 1.33 percentage points or a rise of 5
percent. Yahoo’s share was 14.95 percent and and direct Bing searches
were at 13.17 percent, increases of 3 percent and 7 percent, although in
real terms about .5 percent for Yahoo and nearly 1 percent for Bing.
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