Rumours or Headlines?

[susieq]

Well, I am not quite sure what this may be......  

Random bits of information, rumor and humor from the staff of CNET News.com.

Google in need of a Friendster indeed?
 
"What do you get the search engine that has everything?
Google, after all, is rich with additions and acquisitions. In the last few years it has introduced a raft of new features, either built or bought--from its homegrown news page to its Deja.com-spawned newsgroups to its Blogger-bought Web logs.
Now rumors are resurfacing that Google wants to buy a neighboring start-up with wildfire growth: Friendster.
Talk of possible VC investments in Friendster made headlines last week after AlwaysOn Network founder Tony Perkins confronted Friendster CEO Jonathan Abrams with the scuttlebutt during a public forum.
If made, the rumored investments by Benchmark Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers would be following closely on a recently collected angel cash infusion of just more than $1 million from Silicon Valley veterans including former Yahoo Chief Executive Tim Koogle, former PayPal Chief Executive Peter Thiel, and former Amazon.com and Netscape Communications executive Ram Shriram--perhaps not coincidentally a founding member of Google's board of directors.
But faced with Perkins' public query, an embarrassed Abrams hedged, and apparently with good reason. When asked in recent days about its supposedly impending investment in Friendster, a Kleiner VC is said to have replied that it was on ice while one of its other companies evaluated the prospect of acquiring Friendster.
Kleiner's pause, coupled with the fact that Abrams has been spotted spending many a lunch hour at the "Googleplex" in Mountain View, Calif., tripled with Kleiner's keiretsu investment philosophy of funding mutually beneficial companies, has dovetailed with rumors from other quarters suggesting that Friendster is about to join Blogger and Deja.com in the Google stable.
Kleiner and Google didn't return calls, while Abrams laughed off questions about an impending acquisition.
"The real story is that I'm actually acquiring Oracle," Abrams said. "And Bill Clinton is becoming our Chief Love Officer."
Wisecracks aside, Valley cognoscenti say the pairing passes the smell test.
"It makes a ton of sense," said one Valley VC who's in the loop with the social networking crowd. "If you look at what Google's doing and what they've bought, it consists of a lot of highly scalable technologies where people are linked together and connecting. Google has huge usage, but it doesn't know a lot about its users. Blogger and Friendster both have huge horizontal usage and deeper relationships with their users than Google. If I were Google, I would definitely want to buy Friendster."
A Google buy could come as welcome news to Friendster devotees, who have become increasingly restless about rumors that the free service is going to introduce fees for various services. Half the missives posted to Friendster's message boards now warn Abrams pointedly, "Keep Friendster free, or we will all flee!"
After all, when Google bought Blogger, it eliminated fees and gave paid subscribers a refund in the form of a sweat shirt. "

I probably need to be enlightened