John Ellis thinks it might:
The company that has the most to gain from buying the New York Times is Google. If it proffered a Murdoch-like, no-auction bid of $4 billion, wouldn’t the Sulzberger family have to accept it? Every single class B shareholder would accept the offer. It’s their only exit. It is also likely that Times employees and retirees would enthusiastically support the deal; it’s their only exit as well. So it would all come down to whether the Sulzberger family (smaller in number and not as far-flung as the fractious Bancroft clan that owned Dow Jones) would accept the deal.
Why Google?
What’s in it for Google? Well, for one thing, it’s cheap. Sell off the New England properties and the real cost is $3 billion. That’s not much money to buy one of the premier brands of the information age. It also comes with some excellent real estate, which further reduces the risk. And happily enough, it will probably get cheaper in the coming months. So the price is definitely right.
Second, Google is embarking on an ambitious mobile platform. It is buying wireless spectrum and will soon introduce Google Mobile. In so doing, it is entering into an arena where the established players have hired (almost) every lobbyist and (almost) every law firm with expertise in telecommunications in Washington, DC and in virtually every state capital. Owning the New York Times would level that playing field in one fell swoop. Owning major media outlets is a strategy that has worked very well for General Electric, Disney, News Corp., Time Warner and others in their dealing with the federal government and with state governments. There’s every reason to believe it would be helpful to Google.
Third, there’s all that content. Google is a company that could actually make money repurposing the cultural and culinary coverage, to pick just two categories, of the New York Times, across both its Internet and mobile platforms. An acquisition of The New York Times would greatly enhance the richness and reach of Google News. And should Google choose to invest in expanded news and cultural coverage, it could greatly enhance the richness and reach of The New York Times.
Finally, a Google acquisition of the New York Times would allow Kleiner Perkins (which would likely be assigned the task of finding new management for the paper) to attract people of great talent to a fascinating and challenging project: the reinvention of a great newspaper across multiple platforms and within a variety of applications. Even if the project failed, the knowledge gained from the undertaking would make Google a better, smarter, more deft information age company.
Google, the Walmart of information…