Google bought Applied Semantics for 102 million dollars in 2003, they took GrandCentral (VoIP company) for 45 million, they acquired Current Communications Group for 100 million dollars in 2005, Postini for 325 million dollars, their share in AOL for 1 billion dollars, FeedBurner for 100 million in 2007, YouTube for 1.6 billion, DoubleClick for 3.1 billion, they even recently bought a bloody video compression company (On2) for 106 million dollars.
well, I know absolutely nothing about acquisitions, I do not understand stocks, and I use my iPhone to track my eating habits, but I do know for fact that the only proper Arabic portal is not worth 85 million dollars … it’s worth waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more. I mean some villas in UAE were sold for this amount of money.
Look at the numbers, they said it, putting UAE aside, internet penetration in the region is low, BUT, the number of internet users grew by almost a 1000% in the middle east in the past 10 years. There is a lot of potential here. Yahoo! didn’t disclose the amount it paid to buy Maktoob, but every one is saying it’s between 85 and 100 million dollars. I hope to GOD this is not true.
I’d like to think of Maktoob as a young beautiful woman who saved her self for a a long time waiting for “the one”, and then, got RAPED!
But you know, maybe I shouldn’t blame Maktoob for selling itself so cheap. I think it’s the fault of stupid Arab investors who prefer to put their money in music TV channels rather than in a proper company like Maktoob.
Google is way ahead of Maktoob now, but if Yahoo really invests in Maktoob, the new Yakhtoob! will not be an easy meal for Google. I tried to get a statement from Google about this, but they didn’t have anything to say.
Anyways, young Arab startups, do your thing, do it smart, you still have a chance to get acquired.
4 comments:
Not all of Maktoob is sold to Yahoo, only parts of it.
I know only parts of it were sold. I'm talking about the part that was sold.
Zaher, Maktoob was 'Raped' a while ago....actually is being acquired is equivalent to sex...Maktoob is quite promiscuous.
Originally Abraaj Capital bought into maktoob in 2005 I beleive....and then sold their stake to a US based fund called Tiger Capital.
So this is actually the third time a stake in Maktoob changes hands.
Also, as someone who works in Finance, I would like to point out that the economic climate at which the other deals you mentioned were closed was very different to the current global economy...
thank you Hazem for your comment. I see your point, however, the last deal Google did (video compression) just happened recently. there are also a lot of other acquisitions that took place revently, and they were not that bad. I agree the climate MAYBE affected the deal, but maybe they should have waiting. Online is the way to go. it's the only industry that is actually growing in this crisis. it's not really affected as much as other industries.
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