Written on March 7, 2008 – 10:48 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When Google acquired YouTube in 2006, some guys in the Russian city of Oriol were pretty excited about that. I know I was as well, especially when I saw the video shot by the happy founders Chad and Steve. That’s just a web-savvy’s dream. The guys from Oriol - Oleg Volobuyev, Mikhail Paulkin, Askar Tuganbayev - agreed with me and created their own YouTube: Rutube. So instead of bluntly calling Rutube a rip-off, I’m going to express my admiration for the guts of its founders to just start working on making that dream reality.
They bootstrapped the online video community for two years and turned it into to largest independent video site of Russia. According to the Quintura blog, RuTube has 400 thousand daily users and more than 40 million video views per month. That didn’t go unnoticed by the leading Russian media holding Gazprom-Media. Yesterday business daily Kommersand reported that the media giant acquired a majority stake in RuTube, valuing the business at 15 million dollars. Moreover, they will pump millions into RuTube. Quintura reports that Gazprom-Media has already started broadcasting video shows on RuTube.
Gazprom-Media was founded in 1998 as a subsidiary of the world’s largest natural gas company and is famous for acquiring independent media outlets such as Vladimir Gusinsky’s Media Most holding. Apparently they’ve decided to shift their focus to online media. Considering Gazprom-Media is not afraid of changing editorial policies to their needs, I don’t think this recent acquisition will be beneficiary for the freedom of speech in Russia.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on February 11, 2008 – 6:08 pm
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
This is guest post by Reinout H.M. te Brake, Group Strategist for the Spill Group Holding
Google has acquired online address book, Plaxo in a “sub-$200m offer”, according to a blog on tech news site Wired. The site claims that Plaxo has accepted an offer and that the “purchasing company is most likely search engine Google.” The report has sparked various other online rumors, and follows a month of speculation about a major takeover bid. This followed a New York Times report at the beginning of January, which said Plaxo had hired investment bank, Revolution Partners, to handle a forthcoming deal.
Plaxo’s Chief Platform Architect Joseph Smarr
Silicon Valley gossip site, Valleywag, posted a report responding to the Google acquisition rumors claiming that the deal was completed due to good relations between Google’s social-network strategist Brad Fitzpatrick and Plaxo’s Chief Platform Architect Joseph Smarr. However a separate Valleywag report claims that cable operator, Comcast, may be bidding for Plaxo. Meanwhile CNet dismisses the Google rumor as “unlikely.”
In January it was strongly rumored that Facebook were seeking to buy Plaxo, also for $200m, yet this never materialized. A week earlier, the New York Times claimed Plaxo was due to auction itself for some $100m, with investment bankers recruited to handle the deal. Meanwhile, tech site, Techcrunch, this week cited a Silicon Valley insider as saying “Plaxo has been desperately, desperately, desperately trying to sell.”
Mountain View-based Plaxo started in 2002 as an online address book service, but recently shifted its focus to social networking with the launch of Plaxo Pulse. This tool acts as a social network aggregator, providing Facebook-style news feeds when users’ friends update their profiles on sites such as Twitter, Digg, and MySpace. In January Plaxo joined Facebook and Google as part of the Dataportability Group, a body which is working on projects designed to let users of social networks to transfer data from one network to another.
So, who is up to speed here and can give me details!?
Written on February 6, 2008 – 2:51 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Looks like Microsoft woke up AOL with their bid on Yahoo. The smaller rival has acquired two companies in two days. On February 4th they turned a long partnership with widget company Goowy Media into an acquisition and yesterday they bought online affiliate marketing network Buy.at. Both acquired companies are Ads-related, so I think we can say AOL is looking for ways to monetize their free services.
Goowy makes it possible for users to create widgets and monitor them. They also have a gallery of widgets for consumers, who can place them on blogs, social network profiles, desktops and personalized start pages. With the acquisition, AOL secures itself of a division that is a strong force in the widget market.
Buy.at is a network in which advertisers pay its web publishing members only when a click on an ad leads to an action, such as buying a product. It used to be domain redirect service that owned domains like stay.at, download.at, play.at and, officiously, buy.at.
Companies like AOL, such as Altavista, fascinate me. They used to be Internet giants who founded services that learned us to use the Internet. Almost everybody started their Internet adventures at one of these two companies. But now, Altavista seems to have vanished in the search marketing division of Yahoo, yet AOL is still alive and kicking with five acquisitions in 12 months. Probably because their mother company Time Warner sees it like an advertise spin-off of their cable company. Yahoo apparently uses Altavista’s knowledge, but isn’t promoting the brand. The last press info was released five years ago.
One of the few survivors, Yahoo, is now likely to be acquired as well. Strange, for such a young medium, Internet arouses a helluva lot nostalgic feelings.
Written on February 4, 2008 – 12:07 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
As Scott Karp from Publishing 2.0 stated two days ago, not writing about the bid of Microsoft on Yahoo means losing the ‘media/tech blogger license’. Yet since Boris already wrote an thorough analysis about the possible deal on The Next Web Blog, I prefer to just give you an update on the latest developments.
Google Alliance
Yesterday a source familiar with Yahoo’s strategy said that the company is considering a business alliance with Google ‘as a way to rebuff a $44.6 billion takeover proposal by Microsoft’.
Read more on Reuters
Poison Pill
Microsoft may end up disappointed since Yahoo has some defense at its disposal should Microsoft’s bid turn hostile. In 2001 the tech company adopted a poison pill. This is a defense mechanism that makes an offer incredibly expensive by giving shareholders the right to to convert their shares into a large number of common shares.
Read more on Yahoo News
Google’s Reaction
This is actually funny, Google is desperately holding on to their ‘do no evil’ credo, even when it comes to.. competition. The pot calls the kettle black.
Read more on Google’s blog
Microsoft reacts to Google
Microsoft responded quickly on Google’s accusation. General Counsel Brad Smith said: “The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and on-line advertising.”
Read more on TechCrunch
Eleven dreams and nightmares
If one giant tries to take over another giant, everybody starts fantasizing about what this might cause. So does one of America’s largest newspapers.
Read more on The Washington Post
Written on February 1, 2008 – 2:15 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Everybody is talking about it: Microsoft today made an offer to buy Yahoo for 44.6 Billion. Just last week we discussed buying some options for Yahoo because its stock was trading around 20 dollars. Now the web is buzzing with the news.
We heard the news while attending a Lunch2.0 at eBuddy. Several phones suddenly started beeping buzzing and ringing and suddenly eBuddy CEO Onno Bakker brought up Yahoo Finance on the big monitor where seconds ago we were still looking at a presentation. Its main headline was “Microsoft Offers $44.6B for Yahoo“. Within seconds everybody was talking about it. One entrepreneur told me “Just imagining Microsoft owning Yahoo gives me goosebumps. I don’t like it at all”. Others were less negative and pointed out the benefits of strong competition for Google.
Patrick pointed out that we heard similar (but wrong) rumors while we visited Yahoo Brickhouse in San Francisco last year where they told us to just ignore it. Inside Yahoo they called it ‘the dance’. They explained that every year Yahoo and Microsoft people get together to talk about working together which always lead to rumors but never turned out to be anything.
Based on that story I’m assuming this public offer by Microsoft is actually the result of extensive talks between Microsoft and Yahoo. The Yahoo Finance story speaks of a ’surprise offer’ but since we know Microsoft and Yahoo have been getting together regularly in the past few years this probably isn’t really that much of a surprise to Yahoo. It also is hard to imagine that Microsoft would make such a bold public offer if it didn’t already know the answer.
My prediction: Yahoo will resist a little, put up a little fight and then give in and accept the offer.
Written on December 8, 2007 – 10:49 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
My guess is that 95% of all current businessplan mention Google at the first logical exit partner. It used to be Yahoo and Microsoft before that. But it seems that there is another company that is swimming in cash and looking for innovative companies to aqcuire: Apple.
“Apple can afford to spend a billion, or 2, to acquire your company”
With a cash reserve of up to $15 billion (Source: Fortune) they sure can afford to spend a couple of billion on your business. And you might say that they are a hardware company and are probably not interested in your little Web2.0 scheme. But Apple is so much bigger than just hardware these days. They are a hardware, software, telephony, music, ecommerce and multimedia company. One thing they aren’t yet is a search or social network company. But why not change that? iTunes was a Mac only product at first but then turned ‘PC’ after a year or so and is THE music player on Windows now.
What if Apple would acquire Facebook? They can afford it, in cash, and would suddenly become THE online social network player with the hippest offline social meeting places in the world: The Apple store.
Yep, it is time for Apple to start making some acquisitions in the Internet world. What will YOU sell to Apple in 2008?
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