Microsoft is reportedly interested in some kind of partnership with France-based Orange that will involve the latter company's Dailymotion streaming video site. That's the word from Orange CEO Stéphane Richard, who revealed today that talks between the two companies are underway.
Richard made the remarks in a French TV interview, according to the Wall Street Journal, but he noted that the talks with Microsoft might not conclude in a formal agreement. He added that Orange would still retain a majority interest in Dailymotion if the deal goes through and that Microsoft's partnership would be "industrial."
In 2013, Yahoo proposed a deal where it would take a 75 percent stake in Dailymotion that reportedly would have been worth $300 million. That idea was later scuttled by the French government, which owns a minority stake in Orange. Dailymotion was founded in 2005, but its traffic is well behind that of the No. 1 video streaming site YouTube, owned by Google.
It's believed that Orange would like to challenge YouTube via an expansion of Dailymotion. A partnership with Microsoft might be a good way to do just that, and it would also let the folks at Redmond have a stake in a company that would compete with Google, as it already does in a variety of products and services.
Source: Wall Street Journal
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