The Times has just announced a stunning rumor (at least it is for now and I hope it stays that way), News Corp., which owns MySpace, offered Yahoo! their social networking monster, MySpace, for a 25% steak in Yahoo!
The Times reports that these two companies have been in talks before Terry Semel stepped down as CEO yesterday. This would be a huge deal for News Corp.
A 25% steak in Yahoo would equal to $12.3 billion dollars as Yahoo! is estimated to be worth $37 billion dollars at the moment.
News Corp. bought MySpace in the summer of 2005 for $580 million dollars. $12.3 billion dollars after 2 years? A good return on investment for News Corp?…I don’t have to answer that.
I, myself, completely oppose the idea of News Corp, Foxs’ parent company as well, having such control of the second largest used search engine. I really ask myself, is Yahoo really doing that bad?
25% of the engine for a social media website? Even with the swap, News Corp. will still have somewhat control of MySpace since it will have a 25% share of Yahoo!
We’ll see how this one plays out.
