After Tumblr is WordPress next?

Yahoo paid US$1.1 billion for Tumblr. That business is small beer compared with WordPress, which accounts for 20 percent of all websites.

Could the blogging giant be the next takeover target?

Writing at the Guardian, Dan Gillmore thinks not. 

On the subject of WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg he says:

WordPress isn’t like the other products I just mentioned, and Mullenweg, who told me late last year he has no intention of selling out, is a different kind of founder. I consider WordPress to be the most important platform around because it is a) open and b) controlled by a young man and team whose hearts and minds, from my perspective, are precisely in the right place at the right time. I admire them enormously.

WordPress is admirable, but it's probably not for sale

There’s much to admire about WordPress and Mullenweg. WordPress makes large sums of money as it is and Mullenweg doesn’t seem to be waiting to cash out of the business.

And yet I’m certain many of the big online players have done more than run a ruler over WordPress. It’s possible someone will turn up and offer the right mix of money and a promise to keep the idealistic components in place. We’ve certainly seen that happen before.

This site is on the company’s commercial WordPress.com service. I run other sites using the open source WordPress.org software. Like millions of other WordPress users, I’d be concerned if a rusty giant like Yahoo acquired the business. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.