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August - 2008 - issue > Tech Tracker
Google to gulp Digg
Christo Jacob
Friday, August 1, 2008
Google has signed a letter of intent with Digg to purchase the social news site for around $200 million, reports an influential technology blog TechCrunch.

Digg is a place where users can submit interesting news and information they have found online, and then have it voted on by readers. The more Diggs a story gets, the more likely it will end up on the front page, to be seen by millions of loyal daily Diggers. Getting a site ‘Dugg’, or listed on the Digg front page, is a guarantee of a tsunami of traffic to the site. Google has identified this potential and started betting on the deal since March. The deal would now be finalized within two weeks and Digg would continue to operate as part of the Google News operation, which already runs one of the most popular news sites on the web.

In contrast to Google News, where the stories are selected by computer algorithm, Digg's news stories are submitted by users and ranked according to user approval ratings. The report said that Google was interested in using Digg's technology to help improve its search results by having users vote on their quality.

Founded in 2004 by Kevin Rose, Digg is now ranked as one of the 100 most trafficked sites on the Internet. The company has so far raised $11.3 million in venture capital. Most of Digg's revenue comes from a three-year ad deal with Google’s rival Microsoft, which will be terminated after the deal.

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