Everyone hates ComScore

As the de facto measuring authority of online audiences, tiny ComScore punches above its weight - and earns some serious coin

FORTUNE, September 26, 2008 — Last winter, when Google lost a third of its market value, analysts blamed a small web-research company based in Reston, Va., called ComScore. The firm had issued a report that said Google's domestic paid clicks - the number of times people click on an ad - had flattened. Analysts initially went berserk. Oh, my God! they gasped (we're paraphrasing here). Google's ad business is tanking!