Google in $200m Digg Buyout?
Google are close to a $200 million deal to buy leading social bookmarking site Digg, according to a report from TechCrunch.
Digg, estimated to attract over 230 million visitors annually, has been a longstanding takeover target for companies including Google and Microsoft, and it appears the Mountain View firm are keen to add the brand to their portfolio.
In addition to serving its adverts on Digg (they currently have an advertising deal in place with Microsoft), Google are presumably interested in acquiring Digg’s community voting algorithms.
Google is known to have been experimenting with social bookmarking style voting buttons in recent weeks, and could see a robust voting system as an effective supplement to its links-based algorithm.
At $200 million, Digg is likely to be an attractive proposition for Google and is considerably less than the $300 million price tag rumoured in December 2007 when Digg appointed brokerage firm Allen & Company to find a potential buyer.
With Microsoft still pursuing Yahoo and presumably with its eyes on the possibility of acquiring Yahoo Buzz (which is now seeing more traffic than Digg) and Yahoo-owned Del.icio.us, the way seems clear for a Google takeover.
Talk of a potential deal was strongly denied in December 2007 by Digg CEO Jay Adelson. Neither company has so far commented on the latest round of rumours.
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