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Congrats to the NYTimes for scooping the story that Google is proceeding with its rumored acquisition of ad network DoubleClick. The price was $3.1 billion, making this by far Google's biggest acquisition to date - the YouTube buy looks small by comparison. Also note that this was in cash, while the YouTube deal was stock. It's a major, major loss for Microsoft, which is now going to fall even further behind in the ad game at a time when software and "old media" content is moving online in ad-supported form.