From this DJ story:
“Make no mistake, our commitment to this space and this business will constitute a major part of the company’s growth, profits and asset building over the next several years,” Murdoch told investors and analysts during a conference call to discuss fiscal fourth-quarter results. “We believe through our superior collection of News Corporation assets, and through further strategic and targeted acquisitions, we can very quickly become a major player in this industry.”
News Corp., which in July agreed to pay $580 million for Web concern Intermix Media Inc. as part of a new Internet strategy, could spend a total of about $1 billion on acquisitions, Murdoch said. “Now, something may come along to change that, but it wouldn’t change it…by more than another billion. This is not something we’re putting tens of billions into or need to.”
Murdoch said News Corp. plans to create an Internet portal and is in advanced discussions to acquire a controlling stake in a search engine, which he declined to name.
Rumors are circulating it’s Looksmart, the
stock is up on them. Mamma.com has also been rumored, but had a bad quarterly report today and is stock is not up….
Earlier coverage.
John!
You’ve been misinformed. It turns out that News Corp is going to buy Google and I have proof!
If they do buy Looksmart they would also get Furl, which could figure in with their buyout of MySpace. They’d have 2 impressive social networking services that can be combined to create an even more impressive service.
Looksmart also has WiseNut which is a nice looking search engine.
News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch discusses search plans (NWS 4Q05 conf call quotes)
“….As for search, we’re not prepared to announce that, yet, other than to say we’re in various plans of negotiations to buy a controlling interest in a, what we think is a wonderful search engine, but you will think an insignificant price.”
“….competition with Google. Google is a pure search company. We’re talking about the media here. So I guess if you want to read into it, you can look at competition with Yahoo!, although we don’t see why we can’t live side by side with them very well. This is an area of enormous growth and there’s room for a lot more than one or two players.”
http://www.internetstockblog.com/2005/08/murdoch_discuss.html
Well it’s been 12 months since this topic hit the headlines but Murdoch still hasn’t bought his search engine.
The fact that he has signed Google to Myspace doesn’t change his plans, because Google are only providing search results to one site.
Given that Looksmart’s institutional ownership has now grown to 52% I think they are still the prime canidate.
I guess we’ll see soon enough.