Yahoo to buy 3721 for $100 - $120 million

[netvisa]

Rumor has it that Yahoo is going to buy a Chinese spyware company 3721, whose business model is very much like Real Names in the U.S., for $100 - $120 million. Jerry Yang will be in Beijing to announce the deal soon. Yahoo will probably position this company as a search engine.

[newsphinx]

But the rumor here is that Yang is going to pay 100 million USD for 3721.com

[Woz]

From Cnet Asia [asia.cnet.com], "A proposal on the table late Thursday called for Yahoo to buy Beijing-based 3721 for about US$120 million in cash and stock" ~ "the deal is not yet final, however".

"3721's business entails selling Chinese-language keywords for Roman alphabet domain names". This seems to be a Chinese version of Realnames.

Hmmm, intereting.

Onya
Woz

[takagi]

According to reports, Zhou Yiwei, president of 3721, will go to Hong Kong to sign a contract with Yahoo today. The deal is as follows - Yahoo will give 3721 US$100 million in both cash and stock to buy 3721 Hong Kong Company.

source: Yahoo To Acquire Chinese Search And Domain Firm 3721 [chinatechnews.com]

[takagi]

Now it's official!

Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd., a unit of Internet giant Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), said Friday it had signed a deal to buy Hong Kong software developer 3721 Network Software Company Ltd. for US$120 million.

source: Yahoo! HK/Acquisition:Beijing Co Gets Access To Yahoo! [sg.biz.yahoo.com]

[martinibuster]

Nice scoop!

That's a whole lot of money. They charge $115/year for a subscription to their service? Can they really recoup their investment?

That's a whole lot of money...

[Marcia]

>>The deal will give Beijing 3721 access to Yahoo! technology, products and services.

Kind of gives a paranoid-type squeamish feeling to someone who uses SBC/Yahoo as their ISP.