
Microsoft Is Interested in Buying Stake in Dailymotion - richardknop
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/25/microsoft-is-interested-in-buying-stake-in-dailymotion/
======
ToastyMallows
Kind of a misleading title, Microsoft is interested, it hasn't been approved
at all.

> In April 2013, Yahoo was about to acquire 75 percent of Dailymotion for $200
> million. Yet, the French government suspended the deal as the state still
> owns 27 percent of Orange. “Montebourg didn’t want to let it go to the
> Americans,” a source told TechCrunch at the time — Arnaud Montebourg is the
> French Minister of Industrial Renewal.

Who knows, the same thing could happen this time.

Looks like Microsoft is looking for it's own YouTube.

~~~
nolok
Government didn't want to sell, but the current talk with Microsoft is
explicitly about Orange keeping majority ownership but finding an
international partner.

Source in french:
[http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2014/02/25/orange...](http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2014/02/25/orange-
confirme-discuter-avec-microsoft-d-une-cession-partielle-de-
dailymotion_4372864_651865.html)

------
ar7hur
_> "Dailymotion is one of France’s biggest Internet successes"_

That tells a lot about France's so called "successes" (I'm French btw)

~~~
thisiswrong
Maybe because the french encourage healthy competition [1] rather than US-
style 'free-market' monopolies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Comcast...

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/business/France-Takes-
Aim-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/business/France-Takes-Aim-at-
Amazon-to-Protect-Local-Bookshops.html?_r=0)

~~~
nemothekid
From the first line:

>French lawmakers on Thursday took aim at Amazon to protect local bookshops by
voting through a law that bars online booksellers from offering free delivery
to customers on top of a maximum 5 percent discount on books.

Now as I understand it, competition is supposed to help the consumer, and the
French government essentially did something anti-consumer. I understand your
need to go on your "anti-US" soapbox, but your post is outrageous. In what was
is Google a monopoly? Last I checked Bing had a 20% marketshare.

~~~
adventured
Besides, Google won the search market due to a _massively_ superior product.
The race wasn't even remotely close, they demolished the competition with an
easier, faster, better offering in every possible respect. What alternative is
thisiswrong proposing one wonders: that the government should have forced
dramatically inferior products on consumers at gun point? Quotas on how often
consumers can use Google? It'd be laughable if it weren't such a dark
perspective.

------
noir_lord
The title here is misleading they are looking for Minority partners for
investment for international growth.

It would be an interesting position for Microsoft to take particularly as they
seem to be going all in on mobile.

As an aside I prefer dailymotion in just about every way to youtube so I hope
they do well.

------
higherpurpose
Is Microsoft on a mission from NSA to buy all European companies, or
something? Skype, Nokia, Dailymotion...

~~~
Encosia
Microsoft (like Apple, Google, etc) has a large portion of their profits stuck
overseas and can't repatriate that money without paying US income taxes on it.
That's why spending the money internationally is appealing to them.

~~~
vorador
Does it mean that they can't pay dividends using their oversea money?

~~~
Encosia
I only understand the broad strokes well enough to say for certain. My
assumption is that they can do anything they want with the "Double Irish"
money, but they avoid bringing it back into the US if at all possible since
they'd have to pay corporate income tax on it at that point.

------
hahla
Id be interested in seeing statistics on how many Dailymotion uploads are
adult content vs higher value non-adult content. The only time I see
Dailymotion links are for videos containing ripped adult scenes from
TV/Movies..

------
fidotron
These positions by countries that like to reduce foreign ownership of non-
critical businesses strike me as bizarre. It radically reduces the market
value of the business, and thus greatly reduces their ability to raise money
and grow organically.

No coincidence such markets tend to have a reputation as being nightmares to
attempt to grow in.

~~~
hrktb
It usually prevents the business' core from going away (if Microsoft moves the
headquarter to London or Seattle for instance). The point would be less to
preserve market value than jobs, technical expertise and surrounding
ecosystem.

Not that I strongly agree with this line of thinking, I'm unopiniated at best.

------
mckee1
The title here is completely wrong. The article mentions that they are
potentially in talks to buy a stake in DailyMotion, but nowhere does it state
that MSFT will be buying them for certain.

~~~
beauzero
I think that is what "interested" means.

------
jacquesm
After the debacle around Yahoo buying a majority share I'm somewhat surprised
that Microsoft would still be interested.

------
piyush_soni
And possibly thinking of having their own 'YouTube'?

