The well known internet giant Yahoo! has claimed the company is "gearing up for a very big year" of acquisitions. This announcement comes from Steven Mitzenmacher, the Senior Director of Corporate Development, who was part of a panel at the Global Technology Symposium at Menlo Park.
"If you’re not acquisitive, you’re strategically less relevant in the future," said Mitzenmacher. This may be a move to compete with 48 purchases Google made last year. In comparison, Yahoo! only made a few acquisitions, the largest being Associated Content for $100m.
Mitzenmacher also made a dig at Google for the 2006 purchase of YouTube, saying the price was "still crazy". Google representative Neeraj Arora dismissed this statement, saying YouTube "has paid itself back." This debate was continued when Robby Kwok, the Chief Executive of LinkedIn, said, "You can’t deny they’ve done a really good job with it," continuing by claiming that YouTube was a "great deal."
Presently, there are no rumours about which companies Yahoo! may be looking to snap up, but if they are to compete with Google they might have to start looking at social media companies such as IAC's Vimeo. Since Google's purchase of YouTube, the company has increased net turnover to estimated $900 million for this year, and increased its Alexa ranking to the number three position.
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