Which Search Engine Will Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Buy?
Rupert Murdoch and News Corp are on a Barry Diller type quest to buy up online destinations in an attempt to expand their grasp on the news industry before they are left high and dry behind Google, Yahoo, IAC (Ask) and others. One of the major acquisitions was of MySpace, a youth oriented social networking community with a focus on music. Additionally, it was reported that Skype – the VOIP messaging network, was in talks with News Corp which fell through. So, which search engine is News Corp targeting for a buy out?
BIG NEWS – LOOKS LIKE NEWS CORP IS STARTING ITS ACQUISITIONS WITH THE BLINKX SEARCH ENGINE
LookSmart – In my own opinion LookSmart is the number one contender for a News Corp takeover. Its stock is way down, its performance is off, popularity weening, but LookSmart is the owner of the WiseNut search technology, the LookSmart and Zeal directories, LookSmart.com, and various LookSmart owned educational, news, NetNanny, Furl.net and article search operations.
Basically, LookSmart has all of the works (the whole shabang!) for putting together a huge rebranding and relaunch. Plus, Looksmart was originally an Australian company (now based in San Francisco) – Murdoch’s home country. If I was a project manager for News Corp’s acquisition of a search engine, my mouth would be watering over the chance to integrate the existing offerings over FoxNews.com, FoxSports.com, the New York Post, News Corp’s television and cable entities, MySpace, and all of its local web properties.
Technorati – this blog and feed search engine has been the talk of Yahoo acquisition rumors according to BL Ochman. However, with its popularity among bloggers and news enthusiasts it may be the perfect companion to News Corp’s MyWay.
Gigablast – this independently owned search engine has been the darling of the search geek community for years. Its recently added a blog and government search and has an index of 2,068,530,608 pages.
Mamma – Mamma is not really a search engine in its own right but is a paid search “mini-network” with its own existing tecnology for paid sponsored listings. However, its a Mark Cuban property and he may have larger plans for integration into Icerocket and BlogScour.
