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DoubleClick turned down Microsofts money?
By Martin English | April 24, 2007
Some interesting new discoveries have come out of the Google DoubleClick deal, and it seems as though Microsoft may have put more money on the table than Google did.
John Battelle discovered that Microsoft did offer to match the $3.1 billion that Google paid for the company, and was willing to pay more to ensure that Google did not get a stronghold on the online ad market. For some reason, the private company that owns / owned a majority stake in DoubleClick decided to go with Google. Could it be because of it was a better cultural fit, reputation, or was it for the employees as Robert Scoble points out?
1) Better cultural fit. I’ve seen that some employees are real jerks during negotiations and can sour a suitor on that person’s company.
2) Better reputation of main company. If you were a baseball player would you rather play for the New York Yankees or the Chicago Cubs? Especially if your goal is to win the World Series?
3) Better deal for employees. Free lunches? More stock options? Fewer relocations? Fewer potential layoffs?
4) Better business deal long term (stock price of one company might have more upside, for instance, which would sweeten the potential deal longterm).
5) More influence in industry by going with one company (one company might offer founders better positions, or more trips with corporate founders, etc).
6) Founders might like location of one company’s headquarters better than others (Silicon Valley offers techies a lot more economic opportunities than Seattle does, for instance, not to mention better weather).
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