Valleywag
At MySpace headquarters in Beverly Hills, playbooks are stacked on desks as Rupert Murdoch's minions desperately try to make the numbers on a Yahoo deal work. Murdoch's News Corp. has joined forces with Microsoft in an effort to counter a deal with the mogul's old enemy, Time Warner. Google, which all old-line media companies fear, is approaching a bid with languorous rigor, running a small test of placing its ads on some Yahoo pages. It's all rather depressing.
Depressing, because Yahoo was supposed to be a bridge between the Valley, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue — not a battlefield. And once Yahoo is swallowed up, as it surely will be, those power centers will resume warring, to the benefit of their egos but at the expense of their customers.
Each suitor views Yahoo as something different. Microsoft wants to gain relevance in advertising and search. News Corp. wants to flip MySpace for a profit before its star fades further. Time Warner simply wants to rid itself of AOL, and all the bad memories of a failed merger. Google simply wants more pages to feed into its monetization machine.
No one wants Yahoo for Yahoo, save for embattled founder Jerry Yang. And he has not so much a vote in the matter as the threat that he'll have a nervous breakdown if the board sells his baby out from under him.
It is likely too late to save Yahoo. Indeed, it's not even clear if its suitors understand why they're pursuing it. News Corp. and Time Warner see it as a dumping ground for their online properties — but both would be shackled by a large stake in the enlarged business. Microsoft wants to apply its technology expertise to Yahoo's websites, but it surely underestimates the ruinous culture clash that would entail. Google doesn't really want to help Yahoo; it just doesn't want anyone else to run off with it. The result of any deal would be the status quo.
It's hard to see how Yahoo can escape the snare, and if it did, how it might once again pursue its ambitions of bridging the old world of media and the new. Cozying up to Madison Avenue's agencies meant that Yahoo missed the power of Google's automated ad-selling machine. Playing at being Hollywood studio made Yahoo's embrace of user-generated content too slow and to tentative. Someone will have to step into Yahoo's role. But its cautionary experience will scare away peacemakers. What once was middle ground is now scorched earth.
Comments
Does anyone else find it amusing that accompanying this post is a depiction of Operation Stalemate, as fought under Commander RUPERTus?
Draaaaaama!
Just admit that nobody in the blogosphere thinks Microsoft will be successful with Yahoo! because you all hate Microsoft. It has absolutely nothing to do with corporate culture and everything to do with nerd culture.
Microsoft will buy Yahoo!. They will be successful in integrating Yahoo! into their business. And at the end of the day, all this talk of traditional media having anything to do with Yahoo! will be forgotten.
@Rachel Marsden:
Rachel, how long will it be before Denton realizes the goldmine hanging around in the comments section and hires you? You'd have to reduce your Coulteresque trolling of red-faced libreals a smidge, but I see a big swarthy pile of win in this partnership.
@jackparsons: I tried having her write for my site. It didn't work out so well for me, though it was a goldmine for Nick.
Am I the only one that smells the sweaty desperation eminating from Jerry Yang? First he gives the employees a parachute if the sale goes through, then he actually enters into a contractual agreement with Google. He has made his company so unappetizing that no one is going to buy it now. All the girls have gone home from the dance, Jerry. You're not getting laid.
Don't forget that MSFT has also made inroads into trad media integration.
They had a JV TV channel with NBC. They pimp the big studio/network's content on XBOX Live and almost all of their MSN channels are co-produced by major media brands.
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