Shares fall on speculation it would lose iTunes biz

January 10, 2008

1 Min Read
Akamai Rocked by Rumor

5:15 PM -- Shares of Akamai Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM) got beaten up today on news that the company had lost Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s iTunes music download business.

The company's stock fell more than $1.19, or more than 4 percent for the day, to $28.03. But that's up from an earlier drop to a 52-week low of $25.97 during morning trade.

According to reports, the stock dropped on rumors that it would lose some of Apple's content delivery business to Google (Nasdaq: GOOG).

What's most interesting to me isn't necessarily the rumor that Akamai would lose the iTunes business, or even the speculation that a second content delivery provider could be brought on to help with Apple video downloads.

What's most surprising to me is the implication that Google was being named as the possible second source for content delivery, since it doesn't seem that the company has any interest in that market at all.

Granted, Google probably could do it -- it has the storage capacity and the global presence to pull it off. And let's not forget that it moved YouTube's content delivery largely in-house in 2006. (See Limelight Outlook Won't Doom CDNs.)

But that doesn't mean the search giant would enter the content delivery business, or even that it should. I just don't think Google would benefit that much by offering CDN services.

— Ryan Lawler, Reporter, Light Reading

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