DCLK does have a richer service model than AdWords and that is certainly one of the realities of the business. Having said that I think we can scale back in some areas (though not all) without seriously jeopardizing our investment in buying the business in the first place.

The biggest mistake made back then was the 'death by a thousand cuts' scenario. That is, every quarter layoffs were made and the next quarter revenue shrank a bit more (because we didn't have the resources to keep the footprint intact) and then more cuts were made until the business needed to be resurrected by a private equity firm.

I believe it is a mistake to look at DCLK as a standalone business. DCLK value = DCLK revenue + potential media value from the impressions we have access to.

Our competitors have essentially the same three-pillared strategy (platform, AdX, network) as we do and have realized that the most strategic battle is about the publisher platform and so are focusing on it pretty aggressively (Yahoo APT, MSFT Pub Center, AOL Platform A are basically their DFP and AdX competitors). If we lose platform share, we can build the best GCN in the world but will still be at a severe risk of being disintermediated if Yahoo or Microsoft own the ad tag on the publisher page.

While small and unsophisticated publishers are focused mostly on price, our largest most strategic publishers have been willing to pay for a superior product and service level. The reason is ad serving makes up such a small percentage of media revenues that they cannot jeopardize the latter to save a few cents on the former.