Microsoft Facing Quarterly Loss On Failed Ad Business

Microsoft is writing down $6.2 billion on its 2007 purchase of aQuantive, an online ad serving system. According to the Guardian this places the software giant at risk of an accounting-based quarterly loss (when its sales and profitability had aimed it at a profit of around $5 billion), and demonstrates the catastrophic fail of one of Microsoft's biggest ever purchases, and came a the same time as Google spent $3.1 billion to buy DoubleClick. The online advertising game is notoriously tricky to get right, and has recently resulted in technical difficulties even for Facebook--which is used regularly by nearly one in seven people on the planet.

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