Who will buy TiVo? Google, Yahoo or Microsoft? – PVR Wire PVRWire brings out the old “who will buy TiVo” story for a fresh round of speculation ahead of your upcoming weekend.
They then offer analysis on why Microsoft, Google or Yahoo! might or might not buy them.
Their conclusion:
“With this in mind it seems only a matter of time before Google or Yahoo might pull out their wallet to buy TiVo.
If I had to hedge my bets now. I think it would be Yahoo since they are already partnered with TiVo and seem to be falling behind Google.”
Bear in mind that this random speculation is just that random speculation that we bloggers seem to be famous for. It must either be a slow day over at PVRWire or a Friday or something.
Personally if I were a betting man I’d say Yahoo! — but on the other hand Google has this really cheap stock to swap right now whereas Yahoo!’s stock to swap is getting more and more expensive the lower it goes. Plus these days it seems when Google trades stock for deals that their market cap just goes up that much more to offset the dillution. It’s like printing money I tell you.
Microsoft? Nah, they already got Media Center and also TiVo runs on Linux. Comcast or Cox, DirecTV or some other cable/satellite play? Nah, part of TiVo’s appeal is that they can sell their platform across multiple providers boxes (or sue the hell out of them). For any one company to acquire them for their boxes exclusively they would miss out on the revenue from the other players. Apple? No, they are too busy screwing around with the iDongle and getting the “who needs HDTV anyway?” marketing campaign ready to be concerned with cool technology like TiVo.
By the way Wired Magazine listed the TiVo Series 3 Box as the best PVR on the market today giving it a score of 9/10 in their recent Test issue on stands now.
“The Series3 illustrates why TiVo is a verb and other digital video recorders are mere nouns. The new DVR does everything the series2 DT did — including broadband internet and Web-based scheduling — plus it handles high definition broadcasts. You can even record two TV shows in HD at once. There’s not much to dislike about this smart little box, except maybe the big sticker price.”
Nice work guys!