WebProNews

When Business.com sold for $350 million, quite a few people did a double take.  Weather.com may have been tagged with an asking price of $5 billion, however, which puts that number to shame.  Although buyers will get The Weather Channel, too.

The Weather Channel is, well, The Weather Channel - no explanations are needed.  A large audience and a lack of any serious competition make it a tempting target in the TV business.  The online side of the corporation isn't so bad, either.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, who broke the news of a potential sale, noted, "Weather.com ranks as the nation's 18th-largest media site by traffic, with more than 32 million unique users in November, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.  That is bigger than CNN and Facebook.  Weather.com has partnerships with dozens of big media companies.  In October, the site struck a deal to provide forecasts to MySpace . . . .  The company also has deals with Yahoo and AOL."

It's possible, then, that the website will be a serious driver behind the $5 billion price.  It's not likely to be the primary property (that earlier suggestion wasn't serious), and we'll probably never be told the exact split, but the suggested acquisition price implies that no Web bubbles are bursting just yet.

On that note, any timeframe for the sale remains unknown.