Rakuten to buy U.S. Internet advertiser LinkShare

[Taro Toporific]

Hmmm, I wonder what the rest-of-the-story is on this one. Was LinkShare dumped because of their declining influence in the market????

Japan's Rakuten to buy U.S. Internet advertiser LinkShare
2005/9/6, 02:24 p.m.
TOKYO (AP)
Japan's Rakuten said Tuesday it will buy major U.S. Internet advertising agency LinkShare Corp. for US$425 million (�]...more...[/url]

[gkanai]

Count me very skeptical that Rakuten has the management in place to make proper use of LinkShare. How many pure-Japanese businesses are successful managing acquired foreign entities?

Aside from that, LinkShare's growth is all over and done with.

[Taro Toporific]

.... LinkShare's growth is all over and done with.

That was what I was thinking---the LinkShare owners found themselves a nice way out of a static-or-declining business. Rakuten had better have something good up its sleave.

[IkemenTommy]

When will all these Japanese dot com remnants (Rakuten, Livedoor, Softbank, etc) with over-inflated assets and no equity realize that those glamorous days of living off of lucrative stock investments while not producing a damn thing is over? While they try to acquire some dead beat baseball teams and start a new business elsewhere, they have no solid business model they can live by and this is where I have my complaint. By all means, Japan is a late bloomer in this dot com field compared to the rest of the world but the rest of the world has already come to terms with this. Only time will tell if Rakuten made the right move by taking over Linkshare, but what exactly did Linkshare produce or service? How exactly will Linkshare improve Rakuten's existence or increase their productivity? Just by hearing the name, it sounds like another one of those annoying adware companies only to give users like you and me a massive headache. $425 million dollars is no easy money to come up with these days.