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Yahoo Seeking Partnership With News Corp.
rattlesoft tips us to a Washington Post report that Yahoo is now seeking a partnership with News Corp. A related Reuters article notes that analysts are skeptical of such a deal. From the Post:
"Yahoo is talking with a number of potential partners, possibly as a way to either stave off future Microsoft offers or in an effort to drive up the software giant's offer. The talks between News Corp. and Yahoo ... may signal a resumption of discussions that took place last summer between the two media giants that quieted during the fall. Such a combination would make News Corp. the largest single shareholder in a Yahoo/Fox Interactive unit. That would marry the world's most popular social-networking site, MySpace, with Yahoo's 4 billion page views per month to make a formidable opponent for Google."
Just what we need -- another of the major players in Web content to fall under the News Corporation sphere of influence. As though they don't already do enough harm as it is, with their holdings in the traditional press...
I realize they're competing in market share and some products, but would that make them opponents? As far as I'm concerned, I use Google search (and a lot of other Google stuff) and this deal wouldn't make me change anything.
I don't see this as competing with Google's targeted ads at all (except in market share, and it's nowhere near enough to be a serious competition in that).
Maybe I'm missing something though.
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
What Yahoo is trying to say is : "Anything but Microsoft. ANYTHING !"
this one time... at computer camp... I shoved a linux cd in my windows computer
Seems Yahoo are quite familiar with the concept of 'Friends With Benefits'.
Although in the case of Microsoft they're also familiar with daterape.
A major search engine aligned with Faux News. Talk about a propaganda mouthpiece...
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Fuck them, they ruin everything they get their greedy little mitts on; latest example is one of my favorite Firefox extensions, FoxyTunes. They were bought out by Yahoo! and subsequently had to replace the lyrics query that went to the open LyricWiki with Y!Music, which hardly contains any lyrics to the songs I listen to. Oh, and of course Yahoo! Music doesn't allow you to upload lyrics you transcribed yourself. I've started hating Yahoo! with a really serious passion lately...
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
I think the most important message here is that search engines should be obliged under law to insure the integrity of their search algorithms and that any deviation is documented and transparent. It would be scary if one of the worlds biggest search engines overweighted Fox News in searches for factual information, downplaying Reuters, etc. I'm not saying Fox makes stuff up but they certainly have their own, shall we say, house style.
"The founder of social networking giant MySpace has claimed that the sale of the business to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation last year for $580 million was a scandal and has demanded an investigation into his allegations that it was sold too cheaply.
Greenspan alleges that the management of the company and chief executive Richard Rosenblatt in particular of hiding vital financial information about MySpace parent Intermix Media's performance in order to convince the shareholders that $580 million was a fair price for the business.
'News Corp.'s valuation has increased by $12 billion since the transaction occurred just one year ago, and there are several independent analysts today that agree that Myspace is worth tens of billions of dollars," Greenspan said. "It is time everyone knew the truth about the 'hijacking' of Myspace and the individuals responsible for this eye popping theft.'
Greenspan said that he found internal company reports which said that MySpace revenue grew at a rate of 1,289% a year between 2003 and 2005. The growth of the whole of the company, which included other units, was 52%, which is the figure which most shareholders were given, says Greenspan.
Greenspan made $47 million from the sale of the company, which he left in 2003 amid an informal SEC inquiry and restatements of accounts, according to Reuters."
http://www.out-law.com/page-7372
All this will do is obfuscate Yahoo! (tm) that much more. I like this deal more than the MS one, just because I shudder to think of the effect of the loss of either hotmail or yahoo mail or yahoo IM or MSN Instant Messenger on millions of users. And to date, I havent seen much positive come from the companies MS has procured, usually their services wither and die, while some parts get "assimilated".
This potential deal does not make Yahoo/News Corp competitive with Google. Yahoo gets millions of hits from users who are looking for YAHOO CONTENT and SERVICES, Google gets millions of hits from users looking for other sites content or using Google's services which dont cleanly map against Yahoo. The only arguably competitive services are search, web email, and maps. I would argue that yahoo is already equal in search quality, close to parity in web email, and much superior in maps (google maps has given me faulty directions and even put addresses in the wrong places enough times that I switched back to Yahoo for that service). The thing is though, there is no incentive for users to switch over to Yahoo from Google. In order for them to actually line up competitively, Yahoo would require major architectural changes in the way they present themselves on the web, which would throw off many years of work for questionable results. I don't see it. I think if Yahoo! is going to be profitable again, they need to come up with "the next Big Thing", simply looking over at Google and saying were gonna compete with them isnt going to do it. Their web-presence is already cluttered to death, adding to it won't attract google's core search audience (people looking for clean simple accurate web search interface).
That Rupert Murdoch is actually MUCH worse than Bill Gates?
There - fixed that for you.
Oh, and I agree.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.