News Corp's Stupid Gamble - Delisting From Google

Reports are surfacing that News Corporation is considering any offers for payment in exchange for de-listing it's newspapers and Fox news from Google News.  It is said that Microsoft is talking to News Corp about a deal where News Corp will make it's properties available through Microsoft's Bing search engine.  Bing's market share in search has fallen into the mid single digits after capturing 12 percent of all web searches when Microsoft launched Bing back in the summer.

For News Corp and other struggling news outlets the thought of the kind of money that Microsoft can bring to the table is at the very least worth considering, any such move to delist from Google may end up being hurtful in the end.  It's not just Google's web search market share of 80 percent or more that would make delisting from Google foolish to say the least.  People who use competing search engines often just use them as a second resort after searching Google first. 

A quick injection of cash from Microsoft may help News Corp in the short term, but in the long run sticking their online news properties on a search engine that is only capturing five percent of all web searches will rob them of the very thing that all online and offline media companies fight over, eyeballs.  Online advertising hasn't paid out the kind of money that media companies had expected, and people didn't pay to subscribe to online content.  Craig's List stole their classified cash cow, it's not hard to understand how traditional news outlets are struggling in the online age. 

News Corporation passes on Yahoo

Rumored suitor News Corporation announced that they will not be buying Yahoo as way to keep Microsoft from launching a hostile takeover. The parent of everything Fox and Myspace says that the over 40 billion price tag was just too much. This leaves Time Warner in the list of potential suitors.

Who's The Best Buyer for Yahoo!?

After the board of Yahoo shot down Microsoft's proposed 40 billion plus dollar takeover offer, Microsoft's board who just can't take buzz off for an answer will likely reply with a proxy battle to acquire Yahoo. There are rumors among the chattering classes of stock market analysts and technology journalists about a friendly merger with another tech or media company. Who are the likely friendly corporate suitors and who is the best fit for Yahoo?

News Corporation AKA Fox Interactive. The most widely rumored to be in a position to buy Yahoo to beat off Microsoft is Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The owner of myspace has pockets big enough to out bid Microsoft. News corp. hasn't been in the online media business very long, only since acquiring Myspace a few years ago. Linking the services of Yahoo with Myspace is believed to be a stop gap of people leaving myspace to facebook.

Time Warner After merging with AOL with 34 million dial up subscribers AOL has been run down to yet another web portal. Life jackets and Life boats had better be ready at Yahoo offices.

Comcast, AT&T A buy out from the largest cable company or largest telco isn't about the vertical integration of content and distribution, this is a hedge against any net neutrality law that may be passed when Barak Obama becomes president (face it Hilary is going down, accept it). "How can we give Google equal access to bandwidth when we own the Yahoo servers"