technorati to be sold?

The rumour on Scoble (who in turn read it on BL’s blog) is that Technorati is being sold to a large search engine company. It has allegedly come from a venture capitalist who is “heavily invested” in the blogosphere. So who could it be? The companies that obviously come immediately to mind are Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, AOL and Ask Jeeves seeing as they are the big boys in search. Microsoft are out I think as I seem to remember reading Microsoft were not looking at any big company purchases currently. Also, you would think Scoble would have heard of it internally and therefore would not comment on his blog. Ask Jeeves have just bought Bloglines so I think it is highly unlikely they would go and buy Technorati… Yahoo is a possibility but having just bought Alibaba.com for a cool $1bn it makes it slightly less likely. I cannot think of a reason to rule them out though. AOL have little to nothing in the blogging space right now and they use Google for their search capabilities currently. They do rely heavily on content so there could be a fit, but the content they rely on tends in the past to be from partners at least over here in the UK. I do not know enough about AOL in the states to guess whether it could be them. I have to say I hope not, I generally do not seem to get on with AOL’s online products and I obviously do not want them to make Technorati available to AOL subscribers only ;) Google obviously has Blogger and it would certainly compliment this, they also do not have an aggregator of blogs that I am aware of and obviously have the cash.. Who else? Maybe Amazon as a curved ball to extend their search capabilities, though I would be surprised if it was them. News corp have been talking up their internet strategy lately but this doesnt fit right with the company. Does it help News Corp? They were linked to the purchase of a search engine company but as you can see from the link, I think this was their purchase of Intermix Media Inc. As for whether Technorati should be sold - well they could do with expanding. Localised versions of technorati would be very useful and interesting. Podcasting could be integrated of course. I am unaware of their current funding levels and of course the founders may just want to move on.. Between Yahoo and Google, its a difficult choice. I dislike the way Yahoo integrates its products though several are good on their own. Google’s Blogger is too simplified for my liking but the majority of their products are easy to use and seem to “just work” :) I think I would prefer Technorati to get more funding and expand independently but I doubt they have the ability to stay independent indefinitely.