Yahoo ditches Dailymotion acquisition -- report
The company's plan to acquire a majority stake in the video site are reportedly dead in the water due to the French government's objections, Reuters reports.
Yahoo is apparently abandoning plans to secure majority control over video site Dailymotion due to objections from the French government.
According to Reuters, plans to secure a 75 percent stake in the video site -- owned by telecommunications company France-Telecom Orange -- fell apart after the French government objected to the idea that the "country would lose control over one of its biggest Internet industry successes in such a deal."
The French government sought to persuade Yahoo to acquire a 50 percent stake instead. However, this apparently wasn't an option the tech giant was willing to entertain.
Paris-based Dailymotion was acquired by Orange for $170 million in a two-step deal that closed in January.
The Yahoo deal could have been worth up to $300 million. It would have given Yahoo a more substantial presence in the European and Asian online video markets and would have boosted Yahoo's ability to compete against Google-owned YouTube.
Acquiring a majority stake in the video site -- which had 166 million unique users in January, making it 12th largest in the world -- would have been a major steppingstone for new CEO Marissa Mayer, who has been snapping up mobile start-ups since taking over the firm.
Mayer, who has headed Yahoo for 10 months, has said the company's future includes providing personalized user experiences both on mobile and desktop. Yahoo currently has 200 million monthly active mobile users.
This story originally posted as "Yahoo scraps Dailymotion acquisition plan: report" on ZDNet.