
Google In Final Negotiations To Acquire Digg For "Around $200 Million" - agotterer
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/22/google-in-final-negotiations-to-acquire-digg-for-around-200-million/
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gojomo
Curiously enough, the BusinessWeek cover story on Digg almost two years ago
claimed "people in the know say Digg is easily worth $200 million".

[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_33/b3997001....](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_33/b3997001.htm)

Has Digg's value been stagnant for 2 years? Did BW overestimate? I suspect a
little of both...

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ojbyrne
If this is true (please ;-)) I'd like to point out that valleywag has been
pushing this story for about a month now.

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nickb
So, any truth to it ;). You can tell us... no one will know.

PS: Speaking of Valleywag, they're now saying that Github will be purchased by
Yahoo as soon as the new board is elected.

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ojbyrne
Nobody tells me anything. Really.

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ojbyrne
Although... I had a very vivid dream a week ago, where I was at the "Google
acquires Digg" party. I spent the whole party apologizing for stuff I've said
on the web since leaving ;-)

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iamelgringo
I really hope that it happens for your sake, Owen. We're rooting for you.

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ojbyrne
You'd be surprised how much I appreciate it. Startuppers and hackers and all.

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mrkurt
That seems like a ridiculously high number to me.

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rbanffy
Isn't Digg using Microsoft for their ads? I wouldn't like to be a chair in
Redmond now.

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jm4
Ugh... I thought I was done reading stupid chair jokes when I left Slashdot...

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sdpurtill
It will be very interesting to see how the Digg community takes this (if
true). I think it will be a smooth transition, people don't view Google as
evil (yet).

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unalone
I think the majority will be happy that it's not Microsoft buying. But
there'll be the group that says Digg ought to remain forever independent. They
won't be too pleased.

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invisible
I truly feel it's about time they get acquired. They've been searching for a
good fit, and I think everyone knew the obvious pair would be with Google.

Microsoft acquiring digg on the other hand? That would be a death notice to
digg's userbase.

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iseff
Really? It's not clear to me that they are an obvious pair.

Google really excels at building technical solutions to challenging problems,
while Digg has done a great job building a community-based solution to a
challenging problem.

It seems to me every time Google attempts community, they more or less fail
(Dodgeball, Jaiku, the new Lively hasn't done much, etc).

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invisible
I think what makes them an obvious pair is their differences. Google is
seeking community, relevant news, and more user interaction. On the other
hand, Digg has seen it's pitfalls in the technical sense (most undoubtedly
with the previous commenting system), and in some senses widespread
acceptance.

That is why, in my mind, they're an obvious pair to improve one another.

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unalone
Except that it's not likely they actually improve one another.

Google is extremely fit technically, yes. It can almost certainly help Digg
out in that regard. But will it? They've been extremely lax in working with
some of their services. (Jaiku, for instance.)

Meanwhile, Google continues its search for community. But is Digg really the
sort of community Google wants? Its community is roundly dissed around the
'net for being immature, juvenile, shortsighted, and fanatic. I mean, compare
it to reddit. The fanatics on reddit have NOTHING on the average Digg user.

Google doesn't get that community involves finding a way to get people to
connect with other people. Orkut was a round failure because of that - it
didn't innovate, like Facebook did, it just maintained status quo. By
acquiring Digg, they've acquired a community on paper, but in reality they've
really just risked their reputation for being mature and classy.

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huhtenberg
Truly Epic Lulz !!!!1

Ahem .. quote, unquote

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vaksel
its a good acquisition if Google wanted its own highly visible brand for a
social network(like youtube), but I can't see this doing that much to their
bottom line, since the same person who knows that a site like digg exists is
also probably aware of Google, has a Gmail account, and uses other Google
products.

Its probably just a way for google to show investors: "See we are buying
stuff"

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utnick
But does the same person that knows that Google exists know that Digg exists?

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hugh
This is what I'm wondering. Digg as it currently exists isn't worth $400
million, but if google can use its clout to bring it into the mainstream then
maybe it would be.

Of course, there's the question of how a site like digg could cope with ten
times more active users (and hence ten times more votes and comments), but
perhaps they have ideas for that. Combine digg's popularity-based voting with
google's knowledge of what _you_ are interested in, and you might have a
pretty good algorithm for delivering interesting, targeted news.

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petercooper
If Google can merely use its clout to bring it into the mainstream, however,
they could do the same with far smaller Digg-like sites and for less money.

I think that if Google buys Digg for, say, $400 million, then Digg must
_actually_ be worth that. Okay, it might not have the revenues to warrant it,
but it has a rampant audience, many of who treat Digg like a game and spend
hours on it every day increasing their karma. That sort of support is what can
fuel the site enough to drag it into the mainstream with Google's help, and
why it's worth mega money.

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bprater
Google's track record with companies hasn't been stellar: see GrandCentral and
Delicious.

A list of all Google Acquisitions:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_acquisitions>

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joshwa
Delicious is owned by Yahoo, not Google.

But c.f. JotSpot nonetheless...

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aston
JotSpot got Google Joe Kraus. They're still pretty happy about that one, I
think...

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joshwa
Probably true. But they trashed this great little lightweight application
platform in the process...

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azharcs
I am wondering, how will Google handle the fanboys. Maybe bad comments in Digg
will get fanboys blog downgraded in Google search. Google is capable of doing
that.

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jm4
Are you serious? Do you have any idea of the negative impact on Google's
business if they manipulated search results to squelch a bunch of big mouth
bloggers because they said "bad" things?

Besides, the comments on Digg are about on par with Youtube comments (read:
unintelligible). I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that perhaps
Google has more important things to worry about.

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pierrefar
What about the Digg API? Will Google kill it? I ask because Google and APIs
are not on best of terms.

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jm4
What do you mean by that? I'm not a big user of Google APIs so I can't attest
to the quality, but it seems like they provide them for quite a few things.
Maybe they would do a mediocre job of maintaining and improving the Digg API,
but it wouldn't seem to make sense for them to get rid of it completely.

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pierrefar
It's mostly JS-based. Only recently did they re-open a backdoor to allow
developers to use server side programming languages with the Google search
API.

I feel they have an ethos of being overly controlling. Yahoo! is much more
open and helpful. Digg is great too.

