AMCP Tech Blog

Yahoo is thinking of acquiring Technorati, one of the most widely used blog search engines on the Internet, according to David Berlind of ZDNet. While viewing a Technorati search result for his weblog, Between the Lines, David was greeted with a "Yahoo 404-Error" (Example here), which explains that the web-page hosted on Yahoo's servers can't be located. While he couldn't see the error again while viewing Technorati results, this may give people reason to believe that Technorati is now yet another Yahoo property.

Michael Arrington sides with the rumor mill, and goes onto explain that Yahoo already owns the "Fraternal Twins" of tagging - Flickr and Del.icio.us. Both of these services are the best in their own fields - photo sharing and bookmark sharing, respectively. Today, many bloggers use Flickr and Del.icio.us in conjunction with their blogs. It made complete sense for Yahoo to become interested in these two companies, and it's been paying off, in cash.

Yahoo may want to acquire Technorati because their blog search is lacking, which was launched in October 2005. When Yahoo Blog Search launched (And to this day), it was integrated into Yahoo News, and couldn't be accessed without searching Yahoo News. This would allow Yahoo to tightly integrate Technorati into their other blogging-related properties, such as Yahoo 360. However, Stephen Baker at BusinessWeek seems to think that Microsoft will acquire Technorati, and posted a prediction in December 2005 that Microsoft will buy Technorati sometime in 2006.