Google Buys AdSense.com

If you like the YouTube/UTube story, you’ll like that a similar story has finally come to its happy ending. The owners of AdSense.com had reason to complain; they had started their website in 1996 before there was a Google, and a few years ago, some young whippersnappers decide that AdSense is exactly what they should name the number two product in their $130 billion company. There have been several stories about AdSense.com, culminating in a Wired profile that revealed the three-person marketing and design consulting company was selling their precious, nine-year domain name to a private broker in September 2005.

We don’t know who that broker was, especially since the AdSense Consulting guys could not talk about it until September of this year, but we can figure out that whatever happened, the domain is in Google’s hands now. I’m hoping they sold it to Google and got their big payout, the smart thing, and didn’t just get hoodwinked by some third party which turned it around for a huge profit. The UTube folks should pay attention; AdSense.com got to keep a somewhat bitter message on the domain for a year after they bought it.

The new owner won’t take over adsense.com until around September 2006. In the meantime, a placeholder redirects customers to the company’s new site. Both old and new sites feature a bitter message in italics: “If you think you can get rich quick placing other people’s ads on your site or blog, please contact Google who has taken and used our business name without permission or compensation.”