Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler
News Corp To Make Big Internet Purchase
Yesterday Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. indicated that his company was preparing to spend a few billion on a major Search company. This prospective purchase would follow their acquisition of InterMix for $580 million last month.
So who would News Corp. consider buying? I would guess InfoSpace could make sense, but also wonder if CNET (while not Search) would not be a good fit for News Corp? CNET would offer huge community for Murdoch and it would be a good companion for the InterMix readership. CNET's readership would fit nicely alongside Murdoch's entertainment and newspaper properties. Also CNET would make News Corp. one of the largest owners of Web eyeballs. Finally CNET indicated several weeks ago that it was going to explore selling itself -- thus the timing is right. We shall see.
Alan,
You have me thinking heavily on this. There are very few search engines worth picking up at this point in time. Maybe Looksmart, but they are too cheap for an aquisition of this magnitude. Perhaps Infospace, since they own DogPile which has been growing in popularity.
Cnet would be a possible purchase, but haven't they saturated the webspace too much already? Perhaps with News Corp behind the reigns, Cnet could step out of the web a little more and provide a stronger presence on television and in other forms of media, which has been on the company's wish list for some time.
-Ian