Two Big Deals

So over the weekend, Yahoo! concluded its oft rumoured acquisition of Flickr and Barry Diller's IAC inked a deal to purchase Ask Jeeves.

Which is bigger news?

Is a fourth network (IAC + Ask) a more important trend than the emergence of open digital media web services and tagging (Flickr)?

I vote for the latter.

So I'll be watching what Yahoo! does with Flickr a lot more closely than what Diller does with Ask.

Comments

[Oliver]

i mean cmon, didn barry destroyer of all value diller recently say he was going to divest IACI to regain shareholder value of the sum of his parts? now he going to make more acquisitions? oy vey. this guy shouldnt be running a krispy kreame franchise. i understadne the deal but the most interesting part to me was cnbc report this am saying diller first went to time warner to bid on aol. consequently parsons offered it to him for $20bln (fyi most institutional investors i talk to have $0 valuation for aol unit in time warner models). as ussual it sounds like barry's ego is bigger than his wallet. i have no answer to why banks keep loaning him money and investors keep buying his stocks.

[Adam Fields]

Ummm... isn't bloglines big news? Have we forgotten who just bought them?

(Hint: It wasn't Yahoo.)

[Paul]

You are GOD.

[Alex Rowland]

I would agree. Ask Jeeves is consolidation in a "relatively" mature market. Flickr is just the first step in a larger plan for Yahoo! Yahoo! wants to be the super-aggregator of all things media using RSS. This is one of the first shots in a war that will consume Yahoo!, MS and Google for many years to come. Ask Jeeves won't really be consuming anyone.

[David Gibbons]

too true,

after witnessing diller rip all value out of once-profitable expedia, I see all of IAC's future acquisitions as no-go zones for e-commerce in general

I love CEO's like Barry Diller & Donald Trump - both living proof that wealth, iq and business acumen are totally unrelated - it makes making your way in the business world a lot less intimidating