The San Francisco Chronicle made a big splash today with a story that includes forecasts of Google advertiser accounts. The forecasts were included as assumptions in an internal document that Google provided to its outsourced IT partner that is building and administering its AdSense billing and settlement system. The forecasts are the eye-catching news item here, although the forecasts may be less than scientfic for the purposes of writing specs for the billing system. Nonetheless, the story does confirm the identity of the Bertelsmann subsidiary that Google has contracted with. As referenced in an earlier entry in this Weblog, Google is partnering with BFS Finance, part of Bertelsmann's Arvato Group. BFS, because it only has offices in Germany, Austria, and Ireland, may seem an unlikely partner for Google. However, Arvato has offices in NY and Valencia, CA. For a project the size of the Google deal, it's probable that Arvato is utilizing resources from its IT division in Valencia as well as its BFS group.