Why Google, Yahoo, MSN, and even such outsider among the biggest search businesses as Infospace, would be interested to buy Mini-News?

For 3 reasons:

1. Mini-News is CONTENT!
The most interesting thing is that it actually has ... no content on its own! Rather, it's designed to display content from external websites. It looks like AllTop.com, which also has no content. According to TechCrunch, "AllTop is just a big pile of nothing" [1]. Nevertheless, Google indexes Alltop every(!) day.
Because this is a regularly updated huge volume of interesting news.
All In One Place!

Listen to the "Yahoo should acquire AllTop.com" article[2]:
"Like any directory (which by the way is part of the DNA of Yahoo), the AllTop directory is a destination in itself as well as a service that drives traffic to each of these sites."

The great advantage of Mini-News over any RSS aggregator is that the destination content here is not just pointed to with links, - it is hardcoded into its HTML pages. Ask any SEO expert: Google loves this!

2. Mini-News is EASY content!
Unlike most websites, Mini-News is Ads-FREE!
It's easy to read, as this is main content only!

Why search engines, which make their money on advertising, would be excited about working in the Ads-FREE Mini-News environment? Becase this is IDEAL content!

It's small, - all webpages are under 10K.
And as Mini-News content is mostly text, there is no need for processing advanced AJAX scripts, which still are a serious problem for Google.

Plus, the same content can be used by both PCs and MOBILE devices!

The Google is ready to pay $200 million for the Digg [5], - an unbelievable "heavy" website, which is extremely slow even for downloading, let alone for frequent scanning. While there are such effective and SIMPLE projects as Mini-News.

The most amazing thing is that the original Mini-News concept does not kill ads. On the contrary, - it boosts advertising income:

Yes, it's true that ads in Mini-News are separated from main content. And as triggering them requires additional click, profit from the ads might be smaller. However, because of increasing number of visitors, who like reading ads-free, traffic will be higher. And in result, the profit from the ads can be even BIGGER!

3. Mini-News is new BRAND!
Before explaining what it means, let me clarify something. The previously mentioned advantages were on the level of discussing a Mini-News model. To have a full picture, we should take into account the following.

There are three factors for success of any web project:
  a) Idea (incl. business plan).
  b) Implementation (website, support).
  c) Promotion.

The latter factor (promotion) is probably the most important. No matter how genius your idea is, without advertising the world simply will not know your website exists!
Promotion is also the most expensive factor. In fact, it has no upper limit :)

The Alltop is a good example of how even a mediocre idea, with a mediocre implementation, can easily become an extremely successful project! Its 1.2 million visitors per month [3] speaks for itself!
And the main role here plays just one celebrity name behind it, - Guy Kawasaki.

I launched Mini-News.com last month. What I haven't done yet is starting a proper promotion campaign for it. The promotion is not rocket science, but it's simply beyond size of my wallet ...

It's not about how good or bad my ideas are! To make the choice, one needs to visit my website at least once. Who are my current readers? Currently, just several people. Including the Guy Kawasaki, who will never support my ideas, as they are a threat for his own AllTop.com.

According to creator of Alltop, its initial cost was at least $10,000 [4]. His previous project was also "on the cheap (he spent $13,000)" [1].
Even initial cost of MillionDollarHomepage was "only $1,000" (its full promotion took at least $50,000).

Comparing to the above, they had a serious advantage over creator of Mini-News: Up to the moment, Mini-News has had a ZERO budget!

Look, developer of Alltop hired at least three programmers, with the newest Apple hardware. While the Mini-News has been created by just ONE person! And with a 10-years' old PC, - the only(!) computer he could afford during his 43-years' life!

The SHOCKING LIFE STORY behind creation of Mini-News could become yet another reason why Google may be interested to invest into it.
But this should be subject for another article :)