Steve Jobs: Meep — Jason Preston

Disney has just agreed to buy Pixar at $7.4 billion. This makes Steve Jobs absolutely insane.

Although there would be no direct equity relationship between Apple and Disney, Mr. Jobs would be the largest individual shareholder in both, and would be likely to hold at least a board seat at Disney.

Which was written and published before the deal went through. Wired reports that the deal went very sweetly indeed for Jobs:

Pixar Chief Executive Steve Jobs will join Disney’s board of directors. Under the agreement, 2.3 Disney shares will be issued for each Pixar share.

In other words, Steve Jobs is now positioned to absolutely control the future of entertainment in the next five years. Think about it. He has working business tied with music production companies (iTunes store), the portable media market strangled (iPod), is a huge shareholder and important voice in a traditional huge media company (Disney), and is at the helm of Apple’s computer production as well, which opens the door for media-center style consumer electronics.

Oh boy.

[ NYT also reports the sale here ]