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Who Will Google Buy Next?
Androsynth writes "Kuro5hin is running an article entitled Who Will Google Buy Next?, which features a list of all Google's previous buyouts and some interesting suggestions for the future." A Google-buyout betting pool seems in order.
MSFT total equity, Q3 2005: $47.4B
GOOG Market Capitalization, 06/14/2005: $77.3B
It would be a really, REALLY difficult thing for MSFT to buy out GOOG. Esp since that wouldn't really give them ownership of the company, as the outstanding shares don't add up to 50% if I recall correctly.
Nokia is Finnish, not American.
What do Saddam Hussain and Little Miss Muffet have in common? They have Kurds in their Whey.
Microsoft has a market cap of $274bn
They also have close to $40bn in cash.
They could easily put together a half cash, half shares offer for Google at a very good price.
You are not comparing like with like - shareholders equity and market cap are altogether different things. In any case smaller companies can buyout bigger ones, by paying with shares in the combined business - however that is not necessary here.
Where you may be right is that Google is too closely held to be easy to buy - a few big shareholders could block any bid. Incidentally you mean free float where you say outstanding shares.
Yeah, that's a very interesting one. Sensis is quite fascinating in and of itself. There's been a lot of talk that parent company Telstra (Australia's half-government-owned telecommunications near-monopoly behemoth -- think the Aussie equivalent of AT+T before the break-up) wants to sell off Sensis as it's worth a mint and is a quick way to inject some cash. Maybe Google would want part/all of it?
Sensis has a few businesses that seem to 'fit' google to varying degrees:
The biggest reasons Google wouldn't buy Sensis? One, it's way too regional. It's basically Australia-only (Australia + New Zealand in some cases) which doesn't seem to fit that well with Google's history -- that particularly affects the CitySearch and White/Yellow Pages businesses, I'd say (the others could probably be rolled out elsewhere -- the concepts are sound). Secondly, Telstra has a new incoming chief exec, American Solomon Trujillo (ex-Orange and US West) whose early musings would seem to imply he likes the whole 'near-monopoly behemoth' thing, not the 'selling off parts for a cash injection' thing.
Still, interesting thought.