14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo! will be forced into making a big decision this year, whether it is to continue with investing into advertising or drop it altogether and look somewhere else for cash flow. That's what analysts say, but they add that another viable option for the Sunnyvale based company is to sell to Microsoft, which had been trying to buy for some time now.
Either way, it is the decisive year for Yahoo! and Jerry Yang knows it. He's trying to push his firm into being at least more profitable, if not a lot better altogether. That's the reason for the layoffs and for the new acquisition (pointed out by Tech Crunch's Michael Arrington) that is said to be happening any time soon. Maven Networks is a Boston based video startup to be bought for 150 million dollars, which acts as a video platform for big media sites, among which we find Fox News, CBS Sports, CNet and Scripps Networks.
Yahoo! probably wants Maven for its video-ad network, targeting and insertion technology, as the same Arrington pointed out. Another possible reason would be to try and pull off the same move that Google did when they acquired YouTube, and saw their stock jump almost 400 dollars, from about $200 to somewhere near $600. That would be a life savior for the Sunnyvale based company, but I doubt that Maven would serve the same purpose as YT. Furthermore, it doesn't have nearly the pull or the community that Google's video sharing service has.
When the move is going to be made official, the details will probably shed some more light on the matter. At the moment, a possible problem for Yahoo! would be that Maven uses a horrid player and is Flash-addicted, which is not bad but it might fizzle sometime soon, despite Adobe's commitment to .flv files. The winning move? To be decided later.