ft.com/techblog

  Whatever’s going on over in Google’s radio advertising business, the departure of the Steelberg brothers (reported here by Paidcontent.org) is not a good sign.

It’s only a year since Google bought their nascent radio advertising network, dMarc, and they had a billion reasons to stay. Well, $1.136bn to be precise: that is the size of the staged "earn-out" that Google will pay if dMarc meets certain targets by the end of 2008. They may still get to collect the dough, but Chad and Ryan Steelberg will no longer be around in person to make sure their investment pays off.

Also, it’s only a few weeks since Ryan gave a round of interviews (likes this one on Cnet) about the new, enlarged Google radio network he was running - surely a sign that there was every intention at that time that he and older brother Chad would be around to finish what they started. Something seems to have gone amiss.

(For the record, Google will say only that it is "committed to the radio business" and "happy with the progress to date" of its radio ad trials.)

February 9th, 2007 in Uncategorised | Permalink