if you don’t want their $200 million, you won’t be wanting my 2 cents either
November 1, 2007 
Without venturing a comment on the truth or motives behind techcrunch’s $200 million story, here is my worthless prediction: they’re not going to sell until they’ve opened up global tags to everyone (or at least everyone with an API key, got to keep those signups rolling in). Because being the new technorati, except with super-duper servers that never fall over, has to be worth something. And I expect they’d like to get whatever something it is worth.
Also, maybe they’re dragging their feet on the Adsense upgrade because it would be such a hassle to switch everyone onto Yahoo Publisher 
If Google was in the frame, wouldn’t we have the option to place Adsense units by now? Discuss.
Hmm, good point about the Adsense/ Yahoo Publisher. Hadn’t thought about that.
I can’t imagine that Google would want to buy WordPress; they already have a perfectly good blogging platform.
Yahoo and Microsoft, who have no blogging platforms to speak of, would be obvious choices.
On the plus side, if Yahoo does buy it, the mandatory ads will probably go away, and there may be some sort of template modification allowed; otherwise, it’d hardly be competitive with Google’s offering.
sane persons like you and I may think that microsoft does not have a blogging platform, but I assure you they and all their MVP’s think live spaces is completely viable competition to wp.com and blogspot.
Err… unlikely. Live Spaces is more like MySpace than anything else, and if they were really slanting it as a serious blogging platform their entire approach’d be different. Just because it’s MS doesn’t mean they’re fools; Live Spaces has a target demographic and function that’s very different to WP.com or Blogger. It competes more with Xanga and Yahoo 360 than ’serious’ blog hosts.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us&q=microsoft+mvp+blog+site%3Aspaces.live.com
if anyone thinks that microsoft will invest in a blogging platform that’s not written in .NET, they’re fools. Will. Not. Happen. they’ll buy community server before they buy automattic/wordpress
Or Automattic just isn’t ready for revenue sharing yet.
Hey, if you were pulling in XYZ dollars every day, would you want to split it with your mangy money-grubbing users?
As MattCo™ has said many times before, WordPress !== Automattic. Granted, the more informed users know better, but we just want to keep it straight for discussion’s sake.
If Google were seriously looking into purchasing Automattic (not, not WP), it would be for Akismet/other services more than anything else. Or, to completely dominate the blog-host world (as if they didn’t already).
-KB
And I don’t think Yahoo is going to have any contact with AutoMattCo™ soon; Yahoo people have been investing effort on their (home brew?) Yahoo blog…
I have to say that 200 million with half in cash is proper money by any standards. I like to think I might have turned it down but somehow I do not think any of us would have done.
Once again, Kudos to Matt & friends.
They’re going places
Over a month later and not another word about any of this.
I’d call a bluff on this but Matt would probably spin it out somehow.