Gordon's Republic

Gordon Macmillan

It seems like wild speculation, but could it happen? Could Google buy The New York Times?
It sounds strange, but think back to those heady days of the first dotcom boom in 2000 when one-time internet behemoth AOL bought old-media giant Time Warner.

That deal went with the dotcom crash as power shifted. The focus of internet power has since moved and it sits with different kind of companies, with Google sitting proudly at the top.

The question is raised today by investment site Real Clear Markets. It points out the fact that in the last five years, The New York Times has declined in value by an astonishing 70% and rightly points out that as a newspaper it is likely to get worse.

The New York Times is not the only paper that has this problem, they all do to a lesser or greater degree, but with a recession, big or large, on the way advertising will be hit hard, as it always is, and as a knock-on result newsprint will suffer.

According to the post on Real Clear, at some point in the near future the market capitalisation of The New York Times will fall below $2bn and, at that point, the company will be in play.

Google always says that it is not about content, but does anyone really believe it any more?

The piece argues that should Google has most to gain from buying The New York Times and if it offered a Rupert Murdoch Wall Street Journal-like, no-auction bid of $4bn it would seal the deal with the paper's family owners (the Sulzbergers) having no option but to accept because other shareholders would snap it as they will never get another opportunity as good as that one.

If such a deal is not taken (and while not certain), it appears the future for The New York Times Company could be one of a steadily declining stock price.

The future for the New York Times is about to get even more competitive than it already is, as the aforementioned Murdoch takes control of the Wall Street Journal, the great rival of the Times, and Murdoch has that rival in his gun-metal sights.

Its argued that the Sulzbergers would never sell because they see Tthe New York Times as an institution. There is nothing that quite comes close in the UK, (The Guardian maybe, but it is not a family business in the way that the NY Times, the Washington Post and the WSJ were) and nothing that quite emanates the feeling of journalistic integrity (you could never imagine it going tabloid/Berliner) and seriousness.

And in that vein the family would utter "an over my dead body" before parting company with it, but as Murdoch has proved time and time again he has the pockets that other people simply do not have and they are deep and certainly much deeper than those belonging to The New York Times Company, which would need to do something very radical lest they bleed to death like rivals have in the past.

The argument goes that if the Times can not afford the fight then it can no longer, on its own, maintain that journalistic flame of excellence, which brings us to Google. It could snap up one of the world's top media brands for relative small change. Why would it want it?

Well that's easy. It is a fantastic brand with fantastic content. It does have that flame and it would sit nicely with Google, which has its own (derided) brand of ethics that it thinks sets it apart from the rest of the pack.