With Yahoo’s search ship sinking rapidly, the company decides to take on another route and intends to rebuild itself as a media company. The company’s strong will to get back into the ballgame also prompted Yahoo to shell out $20 to $30 million and acquire IntoNow, a Palo Alto-based start-up. The company, which had launched their services less than 3 months ago, is also responsible of creating an iPhone app that allows user to listen and tag videos online.

Yahoo has closed down several social services, among other things, as part of its campaign to reboot.  It, like AOL, is looking for a media distribution monetization method–historically, such acquisitions for both Yahoo and AOL turn out to be examples of misappropriated funds or simply say, a waste of money.

In an article by MG Siegler, he points out the potential of IntoNow and how it will bring advantage to Yahoo! with the current market trend: “But the competitors lack the audio tracing technology that IntoNow brings to the table. It has helped the service gain traction quickly. We hear they already have between 500,000 and a million users, even though they’re iPhone-only currently. And the amount of content tagged was at a million after just one month, but they’re way past that now.”

At the other end is Yahoo’s arch nemesis and undisputed search champion, Google. Recent developments surrounding Google have also drawn much attention from the public. The possible purchase of Spotify has been reported.  This would be an interesting play, as Spotify is finally heading to the United States just in time as Google is looking to finally launch an integrated music service.  The same enterprise also is making buzz on looking for ways to dominate the mobile search pay.