Google Buys Web for $2,455 Billion

I won't add to the numerous news items and opinions about Google now buying ad serving company DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion, after acquiring YouTube last year, and recently in-game advertising company Adscape Media. Instead, I'll just point you to this amusing blog post over at Google Blogoscoped. The blog is reporting a slightly different story (circa 2017):

Google Inc today announced they’ve acquired the internet for the astounding sum of $2,455.5 billion in cash...

...This is in line with our vision to make information more accessible to end users,” says Eric Schmidt. “With the acquisition, we can increase the speed of indexing as everything will already be on our servers by the time it’s published.”...

..In a conference call earlier today, Larry Page explained the strategy behind the acquisition. “We realized it’s not very cost-effective to buy the internet in smaller portions.” During the past two decades, Google had acquired YouTube for $1.65, DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, AOL for $12.5 billion, and last year, Microsoft for the record sum of $120 billion...

UPDATE (Monday 15 April) : The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google's rivals, including Microsft, AT&T Inc, Time Warner Inc and a few other companies are seeking antitrust scrutiny of the Google/DoubleClick deal. They are saying the deal would give Google a tight hold over the booming online ad market.