Google Will Close Business Radio

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: Google Inc., owner of the most popular search engine in the world, announced plans to close the business radio ads that are three years and reduce the 40 workers, with the reason it does not provide investment results that enough.

Companies, which make the expansion to the market in 2006 with the purchase DMarc Broadcasting Inc., are seeking buyers for a software program to set up ads on the radio. Google will discontinue the sale of radio ads on 31 May and will focus on streaming audio, according to any posts in the blog today.

Step shows that the failure of Google to strengthen its dominance in Internet advertising to offline media. Months ago the company wanted to close the business that sells ad space in newspapers.

Google spent U.S. $ 102 million in cash for DMarc and agree to pay U.S. $ 1.14 billion in installments depending on performance.

"They try to penetrate the media that really old and institutions," said Sameet Sinha, an analyst from JMP Securities LLC in San Francisco.

The growth of radio advertising has been stopped in the last three years. Ad revenue rose 0.4 percent in 2006, and down 2.3 percent in 2007, according to Mark Fratrik, an analyst from Bia Financial Network in Chantilly, Virginia.

Meanwhile, preliminary figures show a decline 8.5 percent in 2008, and Fratrik reduction estimate of 10 percent this year.

Shares of Google, based in Mountain View, California, rose U.S. $ 5.01 or 1.4 percent, to U.S. $ 363.05 in New York at 4 pm in Nasdaq Stock Market, Thursday.