Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), Facebook Inc (FB), Tumblr: The Details

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The only Internet juggernaut that would seem to make sense as a rival bidder would be Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) — if it wasn’t busy trying to make nice with Yahoo! these days.

Big G knows all about monetizing the un-monetizable. What did it do with Blogger? What did it do with YouTube? Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) acquired the magnetic properties, but it didn’t mess with the thermostat. The world’s largest online advertising company simply gave its users the option to cash in on cleaning up the joint. Through AdSense for Blogger users and the YouTube partners program, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) left it up to users to decide if they wanted to clean up their own blogs and channels in pursuit of the almighty revenue share.

One can argue that this will be the only way Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) can make this work — empowering Tumblr, Inc. users with dreams of dollar signs — but it shut down its own small publisher-facing Google AdSense clone three years ago.

Then again, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) didn’t have a former Google exec at the helm then. Let’s see where things go this time.

The article The Trouble With Tumblr originally appeared on Fool.com is written by Rick Munarriz.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Facebook and Google and owns shares of Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.

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