Everyday is a crazy day in the tech news world except when Apple or Google says something - then it's an extra frenzy-crazy day. One interesting news today was TechCrunch being acquired by AOL.
What? AOL? Yes, AOL.
I knew Engadget was a subsidiary of AOL, and AOL did publicly admit their intentions to become a serious content provider, but it's been always difficult to take AOL seriously. Personally, I've never visited the website for almost a decade. I think the last time I visited AOL.com specifically was the last time when I downloaded AOL IM... can't remember exactly when it was, but around the time ICQ was dying and I wanted to try out something new.
Michael Arrington sounds as if he cannot be any more satisfied with the deal (Link). The rumor is that TechCrunch received about $40 million, where $25 million of which was cash (Link). Looks like a sound deal, given that it's not a technology company.
I've always loved TechCrunch, a website now I can't recall how I came to know. It's one of the websites I check daily (at least through RSS feeds). It has been one of the better sources of information in terms of accuracy and time of delivery. I also follow other websites like RWW, VentureBeat, and many more, but they seem to lag on the delivery. Of course, some posts of TechCrunch were rush posts filled with typos and grammatical errors at times, but I don't give a damn on those errors since the content is what matters.
As usual with any M&A transaction, my thought/worry is "would it influence TechCrunch?" Arrington said No - although he said he is not sure about news regarding AOL, but I am still biased and can't really take AOL seriously. So I think I am okay. It doesn't look like AOL would kill TechCrunch or it's trying to combine it with Engadget to create something new.
I also wondered if any recent reports from Arrington/TechCrunch regarding the so-called Angelgate had played any role in the pricing. It certainly demonstrated the influence that TechCrunch has in the world - which gathered so much hype in the US although nobody in South Korea and Asia in general seemed to care.
Another thought that came to my mind was "WTF is Yahoo doing?".
I mean seriously... Shouldn't Yahoo have done something like this long time ago?
Here are some recent moves that I recognize, and I try to venture out where they go although nobody even in the senior management of Yahoo seems to really know:
1) Failed M&A with Microsoft
2) The search deal with Microsoft
3) Meme and the kill of it
4) Removing paid subscription tools in fantasy sports
and 5) some hearsays.
I thought all those indicated that Yahoo was trying to be simply an aggregator and content provider than anything else.
Apparently, I was wrong. I'm no expert, but they are clearly lost in my limited view, and are losing out in their ground to none other than something like AOL. Acquiring TechCrunch following managing Engadget clearly gives AOL a lot of credibility. Sure there are so many websites doing what TechCrunch does, but the Angelgate issue proves its worth/influence and TechCrunch seems like it never had issues with its cast of writers but only with their website engineers.
Financially, I've been ranting that Microsoft is so much like a savings account now that they don't have any eye-popping growth but they are so firm in Windows and Office suite. Yahoo however is a lot worse. Thank God, I don't have them in my portfolio.
