Stories about: ValueClick

Microsoft's three-month courtship of Yahoo has ended but it changed both companies forever and neither can expect to return to the way they were.

Assuming that Saturday's public walkaway by Microsoft doesn't prove just to be a high-risk negotiation tactic against Yahoo -- after all, the companies are rumored to have been talking about some sort of merger or acquisition for almost three years -- then what we have is a software vendor suddenly awash in tens of billions of unspent dollars that it can now lavish on other Internet firms.

When the US Federal Trade Commission announced a US$2.9 million settlement with online marketing firm ValueClick this month, it was a record monetary settlement under the 4-year-old CAN-SPAM Act.

On the surface it might look like there has been some real legal progress against spam of late. But don't be fooled; these victories, real as they may be for the people involved, don't mean much to you and me.

Online advertiser ValueClick has agreed to pay a record US$2.9 million to settle a U.S. Federal Trade Commission complaint that it sent deceptive advertising claims in spam e-mail and failed to secure consumers' sensitive financial information.

Online advertiser Adteractive will pay US$650,000 to settle charges that it used deceptive spam messages to lure people to its Web sites.

Google has agreed to buy DoubleClick for $US3.1 billion in cash, an acquisition that strengthens Google's status as an online advertising powerhouse.

Japanese public prosecutors indicted Takafumi Horie, the former head of Internet portal operator Livedoor, and three other company executives on Monday for securities law violations.

ValueClick Japan, a subsidiary of the U.S. online advertising company ValueClick, made a strong debut on Wednesday on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's "Mothers" market for high-growth stocks.

In a move to broaden its range of advertising products, Internet advertising network DoubleClick today said it paid $85 million for a minority stake in ValueClick, a rival Internet advertising firm.