Wannabe

There are lots of Google wannabes out there. The latest edition to this list seems to be Microsoft, as they announce that they hope that 25% of their ongoing revenues will be from advertising.

door - stable - bolted - after - the - horse, etc... Please re-arrange!

If they are to achieve this, they desperately need the anti-trust case against Google's takeover of Doubleclick to succeed. Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantiv was a real impulse buy of an agency with some web advertising technologies (Accipiter), but a minor market share. So, Microsoft will need to make some takeovers with its cash mountain. Tremor Media and Eyeblaster must be on the list.

Also, of note is the deal for Windows MCE with Yume. The MCE team at Microsoft have long been looking at adserving partners. The clunky MCML authoring language for MCE (which also delivers video to X-Boxes and MS IPTV) is not the easiest and is unlikely to be supported in the future as Silverlight takes off IMHO, so there are some issues here.

Microsoft is also working with dongle-like extenders, as Sony have recently done. The set top box is increasingly looking moribund - but, then, so are expensive MCE PCs..

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