News
Report: Google, Microsoft To Battle Over Digg
- By Becky Nagel
- March 07, 2008
According to a
story
posted on TechCrunch this morning, Microsoft and Google are both preparing to
make bids on the user-driven news aggregation site
Digg.com.
TechCrunch's Michael Arrington reports that Digg has been working with New
York City-based investment bank Allen & Co. to find a buyer for a while
now (the same company it worked with last year when it was seeking
a $300 million bid). Citing an anonymous source, Arrington wrote that "two
media/news companies, and two big Internet companies -- Google and Microsoft"
are already involved in the due diligence process, with both Google and Microsoft
about to present their offers.
According to TechCrunch's source, Google will reportedly offer between $200 and $225 million -- which Digg is likely to accept -- and Microsoft is looking to offer less.
Microsoft already has an advertising
deal with Digg, but if Google wins out in the process, "Any sale is
likely to give Microsoft an option to terminate that advertising deal, which
means Google isn't valuing Digg based on revenue, either," Arrington wrote.
"But it is a big slap in the face to Microsoft to steal Digg away, and
Google can certainly generate revenue on all those page views."
To read the full article, go here.
About the Author
Becky Nagel is the vice president of Web & Digital Strategy for 1105's Converge360 Group, where she oversees the front-end Web team and deals with all aspects of digital strategy. She also serves as executive editor of the group's media Web sites, and you'll even find her byline on PureAI.com, the group's newest site for enterprise developers working with AI. She recently gave a talk at a leading technical publishers conference about how changes in Web technology may impact publishers' bottom lines. Follow her on twitter @beckynagel.