Something to boggle the mind: Somebody is paying 1.85 billion dollars for Ask Jeeves. Yes, that's right, I said billion. Of course, they aren't actually paying cash, they are swapping their stock for Ask Jeeves stock, and the stock market valued Ask Jeeves at 1.43 billion dollars Friday at close, so maybe the deal isn't as crazy as it sounds at first blush. And when you consider that the market values Google at just under 50 billion dollars, maybe it's me that's crazy. Here I talk about convergence last week, and I'm astonished when the market has already priced it in.
And Yahoo bought Flickrfor "undisclosed terms" -- well, to be disclosed later.
All this makes me wonder what my little internet company is worth -- OK, it's not really a company, but if people are prepared to provide me with real legal tender for it, it could become one real quick. Here that, Barry Diller?
Don't laugh just yet. Flickr is a new kind of application that offers some significant synergies to an Internet portal like Yahoo (providing a few valence electrons they didn't know they were missing). The question is what is the next valence point for a Yahoo. But I am probably getting ahead of the market (much more painfully unprofitable than you might first imagine: 15 minutes ahead is wonderful, a year or two can be barren desolation).