As reported on MarketWatch, Google Inc.said late Friday it has agreed to acquire Digital marketing company DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion in cash from private equity firms Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity, and management. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year. DoubleClick is based in New York.

"It has been our vision to make Internet advertising better - less intrusive, more effective, and more useful," said Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, in a statement. "Together with DoubleClick, Google will make the Internet more efficient for end users, advertisers, and publishers."

DoubleClick, a leading digital marketing company, enables agencies, marketers and publishers to unite successfully in order to attain ideal investments. Its concentration is on reliability, innovation, and insight enables clients to enahnce productivity and results.

Since its inception, the company has empowered the original thinkers and leaders in the digital advertising industry to deliver on the promise of the rich possibilities of our medium. At present, DoubleClick's DART and Performics divisions power the online advertising marketplace.

However, Google avoided the query about the future of Performics SEM service customers in their conference call. This fact, left customers pretty much anxious...