News
Report: Google, Microsoft To Battle Over Digg
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 vice president of AI for 1105 Media, where she specializes in training internal and external customers on maximizing their business potential via a wide variety of generative AI technologies as well as developing cutting-edge AI content and events. She's the author of "ChatGPT Prompt 101 Guide for Business Uses," regularly leads research studies on generative AI business usage, and serves as the director of AI Boardroom, a new resource for C-level executives looking to excel in the AI era. Prior to her current position she was a technical leader for 1105 Media's Web, advertising and production teams as well as editorial director for a suite of enterprise technology publications, including serving as founding editor of PureAI.com. She has 20 years of enterprise technology journalism experience, and regularly speaks and writes about generative AI, AI, edge computing and other cutting-edge technologies. She can be reached at [email protected].