Google Wants to Be a Media Company = Content Delivery Network Rumors

October 15, 2009

Barron’s is one of those business newspapers that blends caution with molecules of nouns to whip investors into a frenzy of uncertainty. Barron’s “Akamai Rallies on Rumor of Google Bid” is an interesting write up. CDNs or content delivery networks are complicated. Akamai has proprietary technology, legions of ISPs on board, and nifty methods for getting popular content to a user quickly. An investor type, who actually bought me lunch at Taco Bell, floated this idea past me. I pointed out:

Akamai is sophisticated outfit
Akamai has plumbing in place and on-board ISPs who get financial and bandwidth benefits from their support of the Akamai methods. These involve the injection of smart bits in packets and some other magic
Video is becoming the method of communication in the emerging semi literate world of the US of A
Companies with a plan to be a media giant can benefit from owning an Akamai or similar outfit because it generates revenue and provides a convenient way to slash certain operational costs.

Barron’s said:

Briefing.com notes that AKAM calls are seeing buying interest this morning amid “GOOG for AKAM chatter.” I’m not sure that Google really wants to be in the content delivery network business, particularly given a spreading view on the Street that AKAM’s results could be hurt by intensifying pricing pressure in the CDN market. But clearly, somebody believe the rumor.

See fan and back peddle. Fan and back peddle.

With churn the name of one popular game on Wall Street, I sure don’t know if Googzilla is going to gobble up the staff and the technology at Akamai. Google has its own CDN in place, but with the volume of rich media that will be coming down the road in the months ahead, this type of acquisition makes sense to me. Akamai has technology, ISP relationships, plumbing, and people. Did I mention really good people?

Stephen Arnold, October 15, 2009
Sadly no one paid me to write this article. The investor on Friday bought me a chicken thing with a made up name, though.

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, Google, News, Online (general), Publishing, Rich media

Comments

Comments are closed.

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.