Yahoo Seeking Partnership With News Corp.

rattlesoft tips us to a Washington Post report that Yahoo is now seeking a partnership with News Corp. A related Reuters article notes that analysts are skeptical of such a deal. From the Post: "Yahoo is talking with a number of potential partners, possibly as a way to either stave off future Microsoft offers or in an effort to drive up the software giant's offer. The talks between News Corp. and Yahoo ... may signal a resumption of discussions that took place last summer between the two media giants that quieted during the fall. Such a combination would make News Corp. the largest single shareholder in a Yahoo/Fox Interactive unit. That would marry the world's most popular social-networking site, MySpace, with Yahoo's 4 billion page views per month to make a formidable opponent for Google."

Not exactly a "Google killer" ...

[utnapistim]

That would marry the world's most popular social-networking site, MySpace, with Yahoo's 4 billion page views per month to make a formidable opponent for Google.

I realize they're competing in market share and some products, but would that make them opponents? As far as I'm concerned, I use Google search (and a lot of other Google stuff) and this deal wouldn't make me change anything.

I don't see this as competing with Google's targeted ads at all (except in market share, and it's nowhere near enough to be a serious competition in that).

Maybe I'm missing something though.

Cry for help

[bibel]

What Yahoo is trying to say is : "Anything but Microsoft. ANYTHING !"

F*ck Yahoo!

[PontifexPrimus]

Fuck them, they ruin everything they get their greedy little mitts on; latest example is one of my favorite Firefox extensions, FoxyTunes [foxytunes.com]. They were bought out by Yahoo! and subsequently had to replace the lyrics query that went to the open LyricWiki with Y!Music, which hardly contains any lyrics [foxytunes.com] to the songs I listen to. Oh, and of course Yahoo! Music doesn't allow you to upload lyrics you transcribed yourself. I've started hating Yahoo! with a really serious passion lately...

legislate

[symes]

I think the most important message here is that search engines should be obliged under law to insure the integrity of their search algorithms and that any deviation is documented and transparent. It would be scary if one of the worlds biggest search engines overweighted Fox News in searches for factual information, downplaying Reuters, etc. I'm not saying Fox makes stuff up but they certainly have their own, shall we say, house style.

Re:Great

[xedd]

Yahoo looks like a sinking ship to me. Sending out an SOS. It's like they're giving up. What is the corporate mentality now at Yahoo: do they see themselves as some sort of start-up seeking to make a big splash so they can get bought-up by a big corporation? How rinky-dink.

And, News Corp! Christ, can they go any lower?

Re:Am I the only one that thinks...

[huckamania]

I'm so tired of hearing this canard. Why not blame Intel or Dell or HP or Compaq or Gateway or IBM or Sony or Toshiba or my favorite, Treasure Chest Computers*. Microsoft won because they sold a commodity OS that ran commodity SW on commodity HW and they let pretty much anyone be a vendor. It's that simple.

Apple didn't lose, so much as they could never grow as fast as all of the windows clone makers and Apple never benefited as rapidly from economy of scale and hyper-competition, which meant that their machines were more expensive, until recently. That's not a co-ink-a-dink.

We could talk about the Amiga, Commodore or BeOS, the latter I still have the disks for, but what's the point. I used to visit the Amiga store and actually saved up enough to get a base system right before the went out of business, which I still love them for.

Would you rather be running a PCjr or Warp? Don't blame MS for those, blame IBM. I had a PCjr and believe me it was worse then painful. To say that their reach exceeded their grasp would be telling. If you want Warp, I think I still have those disks for it as well.

-------ON TOPIC------
Yahoo! should fit in nicely at News Corp. I said the same thing when MS made their bid. I don't trust either and this deal won't alter my opinion, whether it happens or not.
-------/ON TOPIC-----

*They offered 12Mb free, which meant the sent a 52Mb HD instead of a 40Mb. Joy!

Yahoo cannot stand alone

[cryfreedomlove]

Good people who work at Yahoo are running for the hills [valleywag.com]. Even if they stay independent, there won't be anyone left to implement Jerry's secret plans to save Yahoo.

Re:This is very true

[Anonymous Coward]

I like this deal more than the MS one

I definitely do not. Microsoft's bias is simple: They want windows to win, and in so doing want to make lots of money.

If you've been paying attention to the issue for the past decade or so, then you'll know that News Corp's bias is much more complex and nefarious, and extends to utilizing its media influence to systematically press a political agenda. For example, with high confidence you could attribute the majority of the support for the Iraq war in the U.S., Britain, and Australia, to the specific influence of the massive collection of News Corp media. Their organization sets the media agenda from the top down, distributing the political message to all the lower employees to distribute. Then the sheer volume of this influence redirects the narrative of the entire national debate on a topic. This is no conspiracy theory, but is simply a plain and open fact.

This is far more dangerous to the world than a question of operating systems.