Google In Final Negotiations To Acquire Digg For "Around $200 Million" | Hacker News Reader

Google In Final Negotiations To Acquire Digg For "Around $200 Million"

techcrunch.com

64 pointsagotterer60 comments

Curiously enough, the BusinessWeek cover story on Digg almost two years ago claimed "people in the know say Digg is easily worth $200 million".

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_33/b3997001....

Has Digg's value been stagnant for 2 years? Did BW overestimate? I suspect a little of both...

If this is true (please ;-)) I'd like to point out that valleywag has been pushing this story for about a month now.

http://valleywag.com/5024012/digg-ceo-and-google-cofounder-s...

This is like Arrington coming here to upvote Techcrunch. I thought you were better than this, Alaska...

I don't think that's a fair analogy. First, I rarely upvote or downvote links or comments, I just read and discuss. Secondly, someone brought up a reference and I gave a link for context. On a website meant for sharing links, I find it odd that you would find what I did offensive.

Actually, I was just kidding. I assume the upmods are people who don't like Valleywag?

Maybe. It's a pretty crazy world. <3 Can I get an invite for dropbox?

What's your email address? I have 10 invites left.

Can I get a hookup too? I've been looking for decent online storage site all week long. hdehal at gmail.

So, any truth to it ;). You can tell us... no one will know.

PS: Speaking of Valleywag, they're now saying that Github will be purchased by Yahoo as soon as the new board is elected.

Nobody tells me anything. Really.

Although... I had a very vivid dream a week ago, where I was at the "Google acquires Digg" party. I spent the whole party apologizing for stuff I've said on the web since leaving ;-)

I really hope that it happens for your sake, Owen. We're rooting for you.

You'd be surprised how much I appreciate it. Startuppers and hackers and all.

Congrats!

Congratulations ;)

That seems like a ridiculously high number to me.

Maybe, but its a very well known online brand name, its only going to keep growing. Though as it grows it has less and less tech stuff and more and more mainstream content, but I guess from the standpoint of investors that is only a good thing. Tech people don't like ads and even go as far as blocking them, non-techies don't (or are less likely too).

It would be a good investment, and I would hope it goes to Google rather than Microsoft, AOL, or any other company who will seek to change it in a major way.

I think a lot of people underestimate the value of web front pages. Capitalising on them has been a mixed bag but Digg has been around for a while.

Isn't Digg using Microsoft for their ads? I wouldn't like to be a chair in Redmond now.

Ugh... I thought I was done reading stupid chair jokes when I left Slashdot...

So what is it worth? Once you get into numbers that high, how do you even make a reasonable decision?

What are the odds it will make Google 20million a year profit starting today or 40million a year profit in 5 years. Granted you need to add in indirect profit but Digg has been going down hill for a while so they need to recover 300+ million within 10 years or it's a bad investment IMO.

It will be very interesting to see how the Digg community takes this (if true). I think it will be a smooth transition, people don't view Google as evil (yet).

I think the majority will be happy that it's not Microsoft buying. But there'll be the group that says Digg ought to remain forever independent. They won't be too pleased.

I truly feel it's about time they get acquired. They've been searching for a good fit, and I think everyone knew the obvious pair would be with Google.

Microsoft acquiring digg on the other hand? That would be a death notice to digg's userbase.

Really? It's not clear to me that they are an obvious pair.

Google really excels at building technical solutions to challenging problems, while Digg has done a great job building a community-based solution to a challenging problem.

It seems to me every time Google attempts community, they more or less fail (Dodgeball, Jaiku, the new Lively hasn't done much, etc).

I think what makes them an obvious pair is their differences. Google is seeking community, relevant news, and more user interaction. On the other hand, Digg has seen it's pitfalls in the technical sense (most undoubtedly with the previous commenting system), and in some senses widespread acceptance.

That is why, in my mind, they're an obvious pair to improve one another.

Except that it's not likely they actually improve one another.

Google is extremely fit technically, yes. It can almost certainly help Digg out in that regard. But will it? They've been extremely lax in working with some of their services. (Jaiku, for instance.)

Meanwhile, Google continues its search for community. But is Digg really the sort of community Google wants? Its community is roundly dissed around the 'net for being immature, juvenile, shortsighted, and fanatic. I mean, compare it to reddit. The fanatics on reddit have NOTHING on the average Digg user.

Google doesn't get that community involves finding a way to get people to connect with other people. Orkut was a round failure because of that - it didn't innovate, like Facebook did, it just maintained status quo. By acquiring Digg, they've acquired a community on paper, but in reality they've really just risked their reputation for being mature and classy.

Aren't digg ads run by Microsoft? If so any idea how long that contract is?

rtfa - 3 years

> "Microsoft acquiring digg on the other hand? That would be a death notice to digg's userbase."

I don't think the average user would care/notice who owns Digg, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't change their choice of social news site based on some M&A transaction.

I don't see how Digg and Google "fit" in any way other than their San Francisco, compulsively liberal leanings. Digg's user-base is heavily dominated by anti-authority adolescent miscreants and apparent adults suffering from perpetual adolescence (Mr. Rose).

And Google? A company almost exclusively limited to people who fit the academic mold--having advanced degrees from advanced schools, with all the earmarks indicating tolerance for nerdy endeavors but without too much of an inclination toward free thought.

This must be a purely strategic, embrace and smother move. Google must realize the "Digg Army" will be too busy pursuing superficial pleasures to notice their gradual assimilation, not to mention the fine print.

Are you confusing digg users with google (and digg) staff? You do realise they are different sets of people?

just musing. this is the internet, remember

I don't think HN is for you.

what? HN is a site where anyone can create an account and post comments in seconds. This may suprise you but the but the non-bay area heathens have Internet too.

I am non bay area, its more the tone of comments. PG is trying to keep HN "different" (but not exclusive or anything).

Truly Epic Lulz !!!!1

Ahem .. quote, unquote

its a good acquisition if Google wanted its own highly visible brand for a social network(like youtube), but I can't see this doing that much to their bottom line, since the same person who knows that a site like digg exists is also probably aware of Google, has a Gmail account, and uses other Google products.

Its probably just a way for google to show investors: "See we are buying stuff"

But does the same person that knows that Google exists know that Digg exists?

This is what I'm wondering. Digg as it currently exists isn't worth $400 million, but if google can use its clout to bring it into the mainstream then maybe it would be.

Of course, there's the question of how a site like digg could cope with ten times more active users (and hence ten times more votes and comments), but perhaps they have ideas for that. Combine digg's popularity-based voting with google's knowledge of what _you_ are interested in, and you might have a pretty good algorithm for delivering interesting, targeted news.

If Google can merely use its clout to bring it into the mainstream, however, they could do the same with far smaller Digg-like sites and for less money.

I think that if Google buys Digg for, say, $400 million, then Digg must actually be worth that. Okay, it might not have the revenues to warrant it, but it has a rampant audience, many of who treat Digg like a game and spend hours on it every day increasing their karma. That sort of support is what can fuel the site enough to drag it into the mainstream with Google's help, and why it's worth mega money.

Google's track record with companies hasn't been stellar: see GrandCentral and Delicious.

A list of all Google Acquisitions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_acquisitions

Delicious acquired Yahoo.

sorry couldn't help myself

wait .. what is so wrong with GrandCentral ? I use that service everyday and I have been very happy with it.

Delicious is owned by Yahoo, not Google.

But c.f. JotSpot nonetheless...

JotSpot got Google Joe Kraus. They're still pretty happy about that one, I think...

Probably true. But they trashed this great little lightweight application platform in the process...

Yahoo acquired del.icio.us

Obviously an error by the poster. On that note, Google has acquired a lot of properties that never really went anywhere afterward.

yea, but those properties weren't that big to begin with. digg has already "gone somewhere"

that's true google does have a nice track record with acquisitions.

wait, I thought, Delicious was purchased by Yahoo...

Oops, I'm totally embarrassed.

(Yahoo got Delicious)

I am wondering, how will Google handle the fanboys. Maybe bad comments in Digg will get fanboys blog downgraded in Google search. Google is capable of doing that.

Are you serious? Do you have any idea of the negative impact on Google's business if they manipulated search results to squelch a bunch of big mouth bloggers because they said "bad" things?

Besides, the comments on Digg are about on par with Youtube comments (read: unintelligible). I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that perhaps Google has more important things to worry about.

What about the Digg API? Will Google kill it? I ask because Google and APIs are not on best of terms.

What do you mean by that? I'm not a big user of Google APIs so I can't attest to the quality, but it seems like they provide them for quite a few things. Maybe they would do a mediocre job of maintaining and improving the Digg API, but it wouldn't seem to make sense for them to get rid of it completely.

It's mostly JS-based. Only recently did they re-open a backdoor to allow developers to use server side programming languages with the Google search API.

I feel they have an ethos of being overly controlling. Yahoo! is much more open and helpful. Digg is great too.

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