Google Inside

Mentioned on a DigitalPoint thread, will Google end up buying Digg Inc.? There is no backing of this at all right now, but it’s not a bad idea.

What would Google benefit from if they were to buy Digg.com? For starters, they know their revenue since digg.com is using AdSense as their source of income. Just like YouTube.com, Google would have an interest because it would just be another source of revenue. Google did want to become the leader in online video broadcasting, but this is a different case. Digg.com is a different kind of site, it’s a mix of social networking and social voting.

Only the top sites get to the front page of digg. Sites are now getting the same affect as slashdot.org gives. It’s a burst of very targetted traffic to your site. What value could this possibly have for Google? It’s the same thing, more traffic, more money. In the end, traffic is what brings in the revenue. No traffic, no clicks, no sales, no revenue. Everything revolves around traffic — something that digg.com has more than enough of.

According to Alexa’s rankings, digg.com is ranked #85 on the Internet today. Google already owns quite a few of the top ranked websites including Orkut.com, YouTube.com, and of course Google.com. Digg.com is slowly growing as well, they are not a start-up company anymore.

Of course this is just a rumor that has no factual backing yet. It’s not impossible though.