Techcrunch has become such a force that stories are now leaked to them as they used to be leaked to WSJ. But WSJ has a slightly higher standard before publishing a story. Usually, they both are eventually right.

So Digg & Google appear to be in the final stages of negotiation. If nothing breaks down, it could consummate in two weeks, according to the sources who leaked this to TechCruch

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/22/google-in-final-negotiations-to-acquire-digg-for-around-200-million/

Woah! This is interesting

I can not decide if it is a good or a bad news for Digg... And for Google too...

Sweet..
I wonder what Microsoft and Yahoo! will do now..

With the purchase of Digg, they could force out Microsoft from advertising on Digg.

A few questions though:

1) Is this purchase only about advertising on a site with millions of users?

2) Or are they more interested in the code that runs Digg so that they can push their SERP experiments even farther into the user edited direction?

Digg has already hundreds of comments about it:
http://digg.com/tech_news/Google_In_Negotiations_To_Acquire_Digg_For_Around_200M

<< Or are they more interested in the code that runs Digg? >>

I'm sure that's not very interesting. Probably user data is much more useful.

I don't care what happens as long as diggnation continues.

In the comments on digg: << Man, with YouTube and Digg under the Google umbrella, Google will have control over every idiot on the internet! >> Posted by neonoodle

James:

(Almost) every idiot on the internet uses something that belogs to Microsoft. (Windows, Outlook, whatever).

So i believe the reins are at Microsoft's hands.

Lol another competition begins!!! :P

Who will be first to rule the idiots?

Digg aquired by Google...
Yahoo! aqcuired by Microsoft...
4chan acquired by Google...
*finish the list*

David
Yeah, but most people use Microsoft products because they don't know there's anything else. People use Google and (Most) know that there are other search engines.

James
Don't forget Google already has 5% of AOL :-P

James lol neither of them would EVER buy 4chan!

This reminds me,
I have a friend who uses Linux (his dad works for Linux in Israel or something..) so their whole house has Linux.
But when we were on one of his computers, i've noticed a Windows keyboard connected to the computer.

I asked him for an explanation, and he said that " every idiot in the world today must have something of Microsoft.. and we got their keyboards :D "

I think our household is Microsoft-free. It wasn't easy though. An ancient (1980s) Microsoft mouse was the last to go.

Apparently Google already owns the domain Digg.ru, and maybe others I'm looking around now, and has since earlier this year. I just wrote a small post about my thoughts on it and some possible reasons why Google would be interested in buying Digg.

"Even so, I can hardly see what Google wants Digg for. It clashes with their current Google News system, which is limited to a couple hundred news sources, and the technology could easily be recreated by Google if they wanted; Yahoo Buzz proved that much. Of course, Google could easily just want to snatch Digg up before it hits the mainstream, kind of like YouTube, in hopes for getting advertising revenue from it. But if that's the case why not simply be their ad provider and work out a partnership much like Microsoft has? The Microsoft partnership with Digg will most likely end if they are acquired by Google, so could another motive for Google be simply to take advertising space and revenue away from Microsoft?"

http://mavrev.com/index/columns/matt/how_long_has_google_had_their_eye_on_digg_and_why

David (http://blogoscoped.com/forum/136293.html#id136350)

<<his dad works for Linux in Israel or something..>>

You obviously don't know much about linux David :P

His dad works as a distribute of Linux to a company called Matrix (http://matrix.co.il/Matrix/en-US/)

I don't really know what he does exactly, but i know he works for Matrix and it's somehow got to do with Linux.

Luka: if could be bad if Google is forced to censor any diggs it may lead to a another Digg revolt and people won't be happy with Digg's "new management or new policies".

Colin: i highly doubt Microsoft would be forced or pushed out from advertising on Digg. It would just give Microsoft a leverage in their case towards Google's monopoly in advertising.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/16/microsoft.googlethemedia

Burn! Oww! David! That burned me hard :D

IF the rumor is true, then...

They are not buying merely to advertise on it. Digg is very tech heavy user-wise. Most users in this genre either ignore ads or block them. An acquisition here will nullify the MS ad contract and actually save MS some $ since the contract itself costs more than the revenue from the ads. MS overpaid for the ad contract primarily to occlude Google from retaining it.

So why pay this much for Digg and its users? 2 reasons...

Google wants to differentiate their feature-set and build out their Google News functionality to include the user discovered and voted-on content – an established and growing 'democratized' news source – that its own algorithm cannot. This will make Google News a more robust and diverse.

This will allow Google to capture some more of the social network type user base (read: active and loyal). Google won't change anything significant about the Digg property itself (except for Search and tweaking the algo's). Like YouTube, it will continue to be run as is for now and grow somewhat independently of the Google mother ship. Just think how much more traffic will flow to it with links from the [more] menu on Google.com and [digg this] links in search results.

Google has done very little in incubating its own "social networking" type of platform. It has Orkut, but you'd almost never know it – at least not in the U.S and 90% of other countries. Sure they developed Open Social, Friend Connect and iGoogle. But these apps don't necessarily attract new users or encourage loyalty.

There is not a short time frame on the ROI for this acquisition. But, Google doesn't think in the short term. They are trying to fit small pieces into a bigger puzzle even if those pieces are sometimes costly and don't always fit as planned. As long as they can define the current utility of the acquisition and determine the scope of its destiny (long term/integration with other services) in the Googlesphere, then it makes the deal palatable.

Lastly, when a deal is more about the vision (YouTube) of what it ultimately will become versus when it's essentially about the numbers/revenue (Doubleclick), then Google puts much emphasis for a given deal on the leaders of the company and their own vision for it. Kevin and Jay have a list of broad reaching goals for Digg and they've been succeeding on accomplishing many of them since the site was launched. They know their vision and they know how to sell it. If the deal is sealed – that's another goal to check off the list.

Hitwise Analysis of the Google/ Digg partnership

How would a Digg acquisition affect Google's property breakdown?
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/us-heather-hopkins/Google%20Top%2020%20plus%20Digg.png
The top category visited after Digg is still Entertainment. However, by only a small margin (3%). In June, 21.34% of visits from Digg went to an Entertainment website compared with 20.67% to News and Media. Visits to News and Media websites from Digg are up 16% year on year compared with a decline of 20% to Entertainment. As illustrated below, the gap between the two categories is closing rapidly – down from 50% a year ago to 31% when I last blogged this in February to 3% in June.

__________________________________________

Wonder if Google will keep the referred to sites ' In an IFRAME – or AJAX FRAME' to increase the amount of Google pageviews and to keep relevant AdWords on the top.

It will be interesting to see how this acquisition will be monitized, whether Digg will become more commercial and whether members will be required to have Google accounts to continue submitting sites

Gmail is no 3? Wow. I would have thought image search.

I was a bit surprised to see Maps under Gmail and Image Search.

I suppose you use Maps on 'as needed' basis rather than obsessively refreshing or heading there for entertainment.

Gmail at # 3 shows how rapidly it continues to grow. Sharewise, its not too far from YouTube which is pretty amazing.

Techcrunch posts an update saying Google walked away from the deal, either for technical reasons or for personal ones:

<<Google was in the due diligence stage of the deal, where they peer deep into Digg’s technology and financial statements. Most term sheets are non binding, so anything that gives the buyer pause can be used as an excuse to walk away – but generally the buyer already has a very good idea what they are getting well before the term sheet stage.

Two sources close to the companies suggested that some issue that came up during technical due diligence was to blame. One source said that the issue was more personality driven, and that Google decided after spending more time with Digg’s top team that there just wasn’t a fit.>>

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/26/google-walks-away-from-digg-deal/

Footnote: The term "Due diligence" at Wikipedia:

<<Due diligence is a term used for a number of concepts involving either the performance of an investigation of a business or person, or the performance of an act with a certain standard of care. It can be a legal obligation, but the term will more commonly apply to voluntary investigations. A common example of due diligence in various industries is the process through which a potential acquirer evaluates a target company or its assets for acquisition.>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_Diligence

Philipp, this is the 4th time that TC has actually blogged about Digg getting aqquired by Google. Seems he's on a roll to just keep content rolling. I wonder if TC does 'due diligence' before writing any of their articles. I have stopped taking TC's feed and soon TC will be hide' status on my FF too!!

And not it seems to be over:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/26/google-walks-away-from-digg-deal/

I'm agree with /pd, TC doesn't have always good tips.

In the function verbatim, the FDA advised the back (Astellas) that it has completed its reassess of the Kynapid NDA and that the relevancy is approvable. former to in view of approval

Digg has terrible, obnoxious users with uninsightful comments. I'd say they're almost as bad as Youtube comments. It seems like the mission statement of Digg is "quantity over quality".

Digg's pagerank is way too high. I get Digg.com in search results all the time. Those links provide no content at all, other than perhaps the link.