Next: The Google Street Journal: Yahoo is worth almost $50 billion; Google's market capitalization is an astonishing $60 billion. And yet, for all their revolutionary and transformative power as information hubs, these companies have not reinvented the news business. [...]
Newspapers have been agonizing about the degree to which they will control this revolution via their own websites, and with good reason. In the digital world, the Yahoos and Googles have built brands that eclipse those of the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. [...]
It's only a matter of time before a Yahoo or a Google decides to buy an old media company in order to differentiate itself by offering high-quality, proprietary news. Or a company like Amazon could buy a prestigious newspaper publisher and reinvent itself as a portal, leapfrogging over those that treat news updates as a commodity.
The L.A. Times' owner, Tribune Co., can probably be had for about $15 billion, if anyone is interested. Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, is a steal these days, with a market capitalization below $3 billion. Google's value often fluctuates by that amount in one day of trading. It would be a real coup for any digital native to position itself as the only online provider of the WSJ.
Things could get even more interesting if the buyer took the next logical step and abandoned the print edition altogether.
