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"Over the last 12 hours or so, there\u2019s been a considerable increase in chatter floating around the blogosphere about News Corp\u2019s purported desire to make an offer for Yahoo! [TechCrunch] after bearing witness to Microsoft\u2019s swift and silent launch to claim the Web portal in all its news-publishing, email-composing, photo-sharing glory - however diminished and gloomy that glory might well be.\nThis I say to Mr Rupert Murdoch, owner of the global media outlet: What for?\nI know, I know, Murdoch is all about business. If he sees something underperforming, and it\u2019s got something to do with printing news headlines and distributing video content, he\u2019s interested in making it better - and ultimately line his pockets with ever increasing amounts of green.\nBut Yahoo! as a News Corp entity? I simply don\u2019t see that kind of effort working out all that well. True, Yahoo!\u2019s appeal is in the numbers. The number of visitors to its portal. The number of regular users of its primary services. Those are the things Murdoch has his eye on when he wants to make a move.\nBut Yahoo! would simply be a distraction for the guy. Besides, whatever happened with his desire to make MySpace the preeminent destination of Web users everywhere? Doesn\u2019t his prized Internet-based possession have a substantial number of folks as it is?\nI think Microsoft\u2019s bid simply threw News Corp\u2019s main man for a loop. He probably didn\u2019t expect it to happen. So now with Yahoo!\u2019s planned acquisition being on limited time clock, he\u2019s rushing to see if Yahoo! means enough to warrant an offer larger than $44.6bn. Which he would really be foolish to think.\nMurdoch should focus his concern on MySpace, which, if I may say so myself, is in need of an good cleaning. A re-design should be put into the pipeline. Soon. And maybe ramp up the user controls. Parents know their kids are using the network. MySpace should provide a personal monitoring system for concerned elders. If today\u2019s preeminent social networks are to be thought of as the next generation of operating systems, as some pundits claim them to be (though that is a vision I myself do not subscribe to), administrative controls for use by parents and guardians are only sensible to add to the mix.\nAnd again, design. It really must be changed. Please. For the preservation of sanity. The kids don\u2019t know it yet, but they\u2019re losing their ability to determine what looks good and what does not. And that\u2019s a scary prospect to consider. (If you think modern art exhibitions are strange creatures today, think of what is to come if and when a diehard MySpacer take the role of curator at MoMA.)"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/02/02/newscorp-yahoo/>