Yesterday I spoke to Pete Barlas from Investor’s Business Daily (regarding Microsoft’s recent acquisition of online ad firm aQuantive for $6 Billion) and my quick thoughts are in today’s paper:

….just Thursday, ad agency WPP Group agreed to buy 24/7 Media, another ad services company, for $650 million. Microsoft had been rumored to be mulling its own acquisitions of DoubleClick and 24/7. Shares of ValueClick, another online ad firm, rose more than 13% Friday before closing up 7.6%.

“The amazing thing about this is that it makes Google look smart,” said Chris Winfield, president of 10e20, a search marketing firm.

What I was referring to was Google’s recent acquisition of DoubleClick for about half the price. When the news of that deal first came out, a lot of people were a bit surprised at how much Google paid but now it looks (on the surface) like they got a steal compared to the $6 billion Microsoft just shelled out. Good discussion at ThreadWatch on the issue.

On a side-note, congrats to my friend Chris Boggs who works for RazorFish, which is part of aQuantive and now a part of Microsoft.

Check out the online version of Investor’s Business Daily article here: Microsoft Purchase Adds Up To A Test For Google, Yahoo

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