Carol Bartz wasn't kidding when she said she planned to aggressively trim underperforming assets from Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and
simplify its corporate structure, as it appears another piece of the Internet company is on the cutting block.
This time it's Yahoo! Personals, the company's online dating business. During an earnings call Wednesday afternoon, IAC/InteractiveCorp (NASDAQ:IACI) CEO Barry Diller said that his company is in talks with Yahoo! to acquire the unit, which is a rival to IAC's Match.com property.
"We would love to have Yahoo! Personals, and there are some initial discussions about that," Diller said, according to a
transcript of the call from Seeking Alpha. "I think Yahoo! has said it's not an absolute core asset to their future,
and it is core to us."
Citing an analyst's estimate, The Wall Street Journal's online edition
said the unit could fetch around $500 million.
Other Yahoo! units that have fallen before CEO
Bartz's blade include hosted Web page site GeoCities and travel comparison service FareChase. Yahoo!'s career site HotJobs is rumored to be on the block too.
- Olaf de Senerpont Domis
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I wonder if Diller realizes that a good percentage of the profiles on Yahoo! Personals are fake (my guess would be in the 65% range). Or does it matter, as long as the site is making money? I haven't tried Match (yet), but I would imagine that the profiles thereon are more likely to be real people.