Was Google’s flirtation with Yahoo! and effort to weaken it?
Yes. I’ve always stated that as a pure-play web company, Google - and not MSFT - is Yahoo!’s main foe.
I’ve also outlined that MSFT would be a better ally for YHOO than GOOG would, because MSFT would welcome YHOO’s web savvy whereas GOOG would not.
Of course, given YHOO CEO Jerry Yang’s disdain and dislike for MSFT, he killed a generous and rich $44.6B deal, which would have priced YHOO at $31/share.
Today, with YHOO at a paltry $15 per share (I unloaded my shares at $29/share), and the economy’s headwinds being stronger than ever, you don’t really need to ask if GOOG was sincere in its flirtations. GOOG and YHOO would have never been allowed to hook up even in an anti-regulation environment led by President Bush or an administration run by John McCain, who is always on the side of less regulation, not more… but what with the financial markets diving into the craphouse and a desire to have some regulation in driving policy, you can bet your last penny (which is what many American consumers are left with these days, by the way), that this GOOG / YHOO deal was a mirage at best, and a ploy at worst by GOOG to fully drive the last nail in YHOO’s coffin.
That David Filo and Yang, or for that matter Sue Decker and company did not realize this is worrisome, and criminal.
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WatchMojo Newsletter$75M is a lot of money any day, but while a few years ago it seemed like a small exit, today it’s actually a very high figure, especially for the Web 2.0 variety of startups that are built on low funding, such as Stumble Upon.
eBay bought SU a couple of years ago for $75M, and if you believe the rumors, the company is looking to unload it, but is seeking the same amount.
Few companies will fetch $75M these days, especially a social media one, which does not really have the DNA makeup advertisers want.
There are way too many social bookmarking / social news services out there. Even the so-called Cadillac of them all, Digg, has been unable to find a buyey: not at $150M (News Corp.), not at $200-300M (Google). It recently raised nearly $30M, allowing founder Kevin Rose to cash out a bit. Ultimately, I think Digg is a cool site, but with MSFT providing the bulk of its revenues, the company is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Initially I thought someone like CBS might like these social media sites, but CBS can simply take Last.fm’s underlying music recommendation technology and duplicate it for websites as a recommendation engine, which is essentially what SU is and does. The thing is: I think we are seeing the floor fall from under these social media sites anyway, look at CNN’s iReport false report that Steve Jobs had a heart attack; then look at this image of a threeway lesbian orgy in the middle of a street, uploaded to CBS’ citizen journalism venture and you start to get the idea: marketers don’t touch this with a ten foot pole… speaking of poles, did I mention the three lesbians getting it on here?
Separately, this also raises another point: lightning does not strike twice, let alone thrice. Sure, eBay’s $1.5B acquisition of Paypal was brilliant, but its acquisitions of both Skype and SU have been anything but.
