Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

The world woke up Monday to the news was that Barry Diller had bought the Ask Jeeves search engine for $1.9 billion. The Los Angeles Times reported that "Diller's Search May Now Be Over" and to test that hypothesis we asked Jeeves "Will Barry Diller Buy Rainy Day?" It's not easy to interpret the outcome but topping the list of results was the story "One theory is that Google will save the cash for a rainy day..." Interestingly, it was from Fool.com. Oh, well. Google's money is just as welcome here, so send it along lads.

With the New York Times buying About.com for $410 million cash and Yahoo! acquiring Flickr for an undisclosed but supposedly hefty sum, it feels like 1998 all over again, as many commentators have alreday pointed out, but surely the best of all the time warp moments was the AFP's brain-dead decision yesterday to sue Google for daring to link to its stories. Google has politely started removing all links with the result that AFP is now less relevant than ever. Why bother publishing online at all if you block one of the best marketing channels in the world? No Google links means lots less traffic. Soooooooo 1996.