More Reasons to Make This Technology Bet: Microsoft Corporation (MSFT), Facebook Inc (FB), Google Inc (GOOG)

Google vs. Facebook

Facebook has started to get a lead on Google with its penetration into handheld devices. According to eMarketer, Google leads the US display advertisement industry with a 15.4% share, and Facebook is catching up with a 14.4% share. Despite carving out a major market share, Facebook still lags behind Google when it comes to advertisement technology. Google is the leader when it comes to online advertisement technology, but a recent acquisition by Facebook will even out the playing field: The company announced that it has acquired to buy Atlas Advertiser Suite from Microsoft for an undisclosed sum.

Atlas Sale

Microsoft had acquired the suite in 2007 with its $6.3 billion acquisition of aQuantive in 2007. Atlas is an ad management and measurement platform that will help Facebook compete with Google through better assessment of ad effectiveness. As I have mentioned above, Microsoft has not been able to make effective use of online advertisement technology because it has failed to drive growth from this segment, despite its various attempts with Windows Live, Bing etc. This technology will help Facebook measure the effectiveness of its ads and make it easier for the company to demand high rates for its display space. Microsoft has fallen out from the online display race, but Google and Facebook are all set to dominate.

Bottom Line

The discussion above shows that while Google is the leader right now, it will have to do a lot to hold on to its top spot. Facebook is the best bet for online advertisement and Google remains an attractive investment in the industry but will have to more effectively leverage Android to compete with Facebook in the long run.

The article More Reasons to Make This Technology Bet originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Mohsin Saeed.

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