What isn’t News Corp. “exploring” these days? They’re exploring the purchase of Dow Jones, they’re exploring how to get a business channel off the ground … about the only thing they aren’t exploring is in the inside of Katie Couric’s colon, but probably only because she’s done such a good job of that herself.
So when we heard Rupert Murdoch was “exploring” the idea of dumping MySpace in exchange for a chunk of Yahoo, well, there was some yawning.
Reports the London Times:
News Corporation has discussed swapping MySpace, its internet social networking unit, with Yahoo! in return for a 30 per cent stake in the enlarged group.
The discussions remain tentative and could collapse after the departure of Terry Semel as Yahoo!???s chief executive and his replacement by Jerry Yang this week. Mr Yang, co-founder of Yahoo! and incoming chief executive, yesterday pledged to ???dig in??? to his new role, and acknowledged the difficult task he faces to arrest the decline in the internet portal???s shares. […]
A deal would demonstrate a remarkably swift return on News Corp???s investment in MySpace, which it acquired for $580 million in summer 2005.
Yesterday Yahoo! was worth $37 billion. A quarter stake in an enlarged company would be worth $11.1 billion.
So, um, this is even being considered? Didn’t Yahoo bid $1 billion for Facebook, only to be shot down … and now they’d consider giving up a third of the company for the crappier social networking site? Oops, we mean they’d “explore” it.
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