Google’s long-anticipated acquisition of online ad service DoubleClick is coming to a close. The $3.1 billion deal just completed after nearly a year of regulatory wrangling. This new addition is expected to turn the Internet search leader into an even more powerful marketing vehicle that’s fueled by better insights about consumers.

Look out Microsoft and Yahoo… it might be best just to resolve the love/hate courtship to prevent Google from further gains in the race for Internet advertising dominance.

Socialize

Cramer has gone on the record as saying, “defense stocks are as strong as ever and as cheap as ever” If John McCain makes it to the White House he believes you want to be in the defensive stocks. Cramer’s list includes:

Lockheed Martin (LMT), Northrup Grumman (NOC), General Dynamics (GD), L-3 Communications (LLL) and Raytheon (RTN)

Socialize

Since everything she touches turns to gold, it is no wonder why Oprah has Cramer’s vote. Oprah has joined forces with Discovery Holdings (The Discovery Channel) to launch her own network. With DISCA trading 7% lower than when Cramer first backed it…looks like a good time to back up the truck on a stock that has many catalysts.

Socialize

Yahoo extended the deadline for nominating candidates to its board fearing that Microsoft would nominate its own member to the board in an attempt to push the deal through. Yahoo had given itself more time to search for a white knight to help it fight off an unwanted takeover bid from Microsoft. There are current talks with AOL but as seen in 2005 those attempts have failed once before due to issues related to Time Warner’s continued ownership in AOL

.

Socialize

Capital IQ has estimated that since October of last year, six CEOs have lost more than $1 billion through holdings of their companies’ stock. Here is the list:

Larry Ellison of Oracle, Michael Dell of Dell Inc., Micky Arison of Carnival, Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon.com, Eric Schmidt of Google and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp.

So if you are feeling bad about your holdings…just remember you are not alone.

Socialize

Visa announced that it will be issuing 406 million shares between $37 and $42 making it quite possibly the largest IPO we have ever seen. In fact if it raises the $19 billion it will be the size of the second and third largest IPO’s combined. When issued (rumor has it October) it will trade under the symbol V. This might turn out to be one of the only gifts the market gets this year…it is a must buy. If Mastercard’s IPO is any indication of what we have to look forward to then Visa should grow five-fold in no time flat.

Socialize