The remaining 2 major portals will almost certainly need to partner with multinational’s also in order to maintain their market share.

Google’s model would be pretty different to that of REA’s though - its going to mean some pretty huge changes in the landscape - interesting indeed.

This is massive.

ah ya spoil sport - I spent hours writing that

Newslimited had nothing to do with it, neither did anyone at REA.

Ok… confession time.

I wrote the article as a joke - it was online for all of 4 hours and your site was the only place I posted it coz I knew it would get a good stir. The market isn’t even trading today - no one is getting rich on this one unfortunatly.

I was just kidding around Peter. If it makes you feel better, I once read an April Fools newspaper article about a time traveler getting arrested for insider trading. Bought it hook-line-and-sinker - forwarded it to all my collegues - was the lauging stock of my office.

Come on… admit it - you’re just sad that the gossip of the century wasn’t true. April Phooly? I can’t believe you bought that ;).

Hey its April 1 - every man for himself guys.

C`mon Simon Baker posted the Ballrat ad in his own Blog - from the internviews I’ve seen he seems to have a pretty good sense of humour I’m sure he’s got bigger things to worry about.

Peter,

I logged on to see what joke you had played on unsuspecting readers and found that someone had played one on you… !!!!

I cant believe that you missed all the clues he inserted…. It was a job well done by Nick.

Now the real joke would be a real announcement to the market on Monday or Tuesday of the same thing… That would see a few uncomfortable questions asked by the authorities of how you had inside information… hehehe…

Maybe we should have April Fools week … Peter could have phoned Nick pretending to be an ASX investigator looking at insider trading rumours, or as a Google representative from Wunkle and Funkle Solicitors phoning to ask how he knew of the impending offer to REA shareholders.

Oh the fun that could have been had.

It just gets funnier - Simon says “i can confirm it had nothing to do with us.” When it was all about REA and Google so how can it then have nothing to do with them ?

Or, maybe Simon was trying to say that it did not come from REA - as it had everything to do about them.

Although it would come as a surprise that someone from REA did not have their fingerprints somewhere on a keyboard. Or should we then look for a relative of Avina Larf of Prof April Pholey ?

Robert - is this another example of you misunderstanding what people are saying? or are you just being an old stick in the mud?

Is this an example of practical jokes going too far?

E

This was a terrific April fools joke Nick. When I 1st (quickly) read it, there was a certain degree of plausibility. Initially, I’d didn’t twig on the ‘Avina Larf’ and ‘April Pholey’ names. Funny.

But after a double take I was not convinced by the ineptitude of a New Corp journo not being able to spell - ‘steak’, ‘substancial’ and ‘annoucment’.

Also, the comment about ‘shares climbed 20% on the back of the announcement’ on the weekend!?!?
One thing that you’ll have to be careful of is that Newscorp may not appreciate you passing of their site as the source of an article that could have a material effect of the value of a listed company. Anticipate a call from their legal team.

By the way Simon B, Harold is living safely with me, although his memory isn’t as great as it use to be. But he did mention to me that when he sold his house at Cheviot Beach, he listed exclusively on realestate.com.au, and did not waste his money on print advertising or any of the 2nd tier portals.

Nick - loved it - well done - but the price was too low - Market Cap at present is about 660 Million - so it would appear like a steal - unless you were factoring in future share price

I work at realestate.com.au/the REA Group.)

Nick, congrats on the joke. I have to admit that Peter wasn’t the only one wondering if this could possibly be true right around 11:30 AM yesterday. Tell me, how did you get us to bite? Did you email the link to Robert or post it in a comment?

dave

[...] Peter Ricci - Google buys REA (oops) Why? Because he got duped brilliantly into thinking that Google had purchased REA on of all [...]