Google would probably spend a few million building a competitor and would then have to fight tooth and nail for a position in the social news market. I would imagine it's very unlikely they'd make significant progress.<p>I've read that Yahoo Buzz has quite a few users, but there's still not much "buzz" around it. I didn't even know AOL was in this market.<p>It would probably be more worthwhile to take a few million dollars outside and have a barbeque with it than to waste it trying to start a social news site. Not to mention they're just going to get a bunch of bad press when they don't completely dominate.<p>Buying the 800lb gorilla for $200M is a relative bargain. It's going to be seen as a major coup in the acquisition frenzy that's been going on lately and will ensure that when Microsoft gets into this market they'll be nothing but another also-ran. On top of it all they get to take a very high profile customer away from MSN.