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Posts Tagged “

Acquisitions

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video search

Why Google should hurry up and buy Blinkx


Blinkx founder Suranga Chandratillake has always wanted his video search engine to be to online video what Google is to the Web. Here comes his chance. On May 24, a clause in Blinkx's IPO filings that requires the company to pay its former parent, U.K. search engine Autonomy, $50 million in case of any acquisition will expire. Both Google as well as News Corp. are said to be bidding to acquire the company. Google would be smart to cinch the deal. More »

12:20 PM on Fri May 9 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,178 views, 5 comments

Latest by rizzle: no one's heard of truveo? more »

rumormonger

Helio-Virgin deal might involve multibillion-dollar Sprint investment

Helio backer SK Telecom, the Korean wireless giant, is in negotiations to purchase Virgin Mobile USA. The plan: combine the two properties and then invest enough in Sprint Nextel to get all three companies working together. Sprint already runs the network over which Helio and Virgin run their cell-phone services. Complicating the deal: T-Mobile's rumored interest in buying Sprint. "Part of something is better than all of nothing," a source close to Helio tells us. More »

11:20 AM on Fri May 9 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
239 views, Comment

acquisitions

Microsoft chief strategy officer leaves the door open for Yahoo

Microsoft's chief strategy officer Craig Munde told reporters yesterday that the Yahoo merger is off for good — he "assumed", before putting the ball back in Yahoo's court:
The market may wish that the Yahoo deal may come back together, but Microsoft at least at this point assumes it's over. Yahoo could always come back again and say please buy us for $33 (a share) and I'm sure we might reconsider it but we're not assuming that's going to happen

9:20 AM on Fri May 9 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
396 views, Comment

jackpot

Shawn Fanning might never have to pitch Volkswagens again

Finally, Napster creator Shawn Fanning will make a little bank. After Napster went bankrupt and he sold Snocap to Imeem for not much at all, Fanning and cofounder Jon Baudanza have sold social network startup Rupture to Electronic Arts for $30 million. The best part: Fanning and Baudanza did it without launching a product out of beta. All Rupture ever built was a still-in-beta network for World of Warcraft gamers. Investors cashing in on the Volkswagen pitchman's payday (see video) include Ron Conway, Joi Ito, Reid Hoffman, and Baseline Ventures.

8:40 AM on Fri May 9 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
271 views, 2 comments

Latest by Nicholas Carlson: @Fanning: Tell me what you've heard? more »

Microsoft dashes hostile Yahoo takeover hopes In a letter from software giant Microsoft's lawyers at Sullivan & Cromwell to proxy board members, the company rescinded the agreements it had struck in case of a hostile take-over bid for Web search pioneer Yahoo. But hey, with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang now begging for deal with tail tucked and head down, the companies may still agree to a friendly take-over bid. [WSJ]

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yahoo

Humbled Yang disavows high-fives, says he was "very happy" to deal with Microsoft

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has not been replaced by chairman Roy Bostock, Kara Swisher reports. Yang's reputation, however, has taken a severe tarnishing. How far has his reputation fallen? More »

8:20 AM on Wed May 7 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
2,171 views, 3 comments

acquisitions

Sprint, Clearwire work seven-way deal to create new wireless-broadband startup worth $12 billion

Clearwire, the wireless data company started by Seattle-area cell-phone billionaire Craig McCaw, will be recontsituted as a new company valued at $12 billion backed by primarily by Sprint, but also by cable providers Time Warner, Comcast and Bright House, chipmaker Intel and Web search behemoth Google. McCaw will continue as chairman of the board at Clearwire and Ben Wolff as CEO. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse agreed to give control to the pair as part of the deal, to ease concerns that Sprint's core wireless business would conflict as the new company's services began to compete for voice and data customers. Sprint has encountered numerous problems with deploying Intel-developed WiMax, and there's still the issue of whether the company will sell Nextel after a $35 billion acquisition in 2005 went south.

2:20 PM on Tue May 6 2008
By Jackson West
310 views, 3 comments

Latest by thelifter: Now both companies can suck and half ass their operations more efficiently. more »

clips

Decker: We only told shareholders about Microsoft's $31 offer

Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock told reporters that shareholders supported Jerry Yang's decision to refuse Microsoft's bid for the company, even when it reached $33 per share. But yesterday, major shareholders Bill Miller and Gordon Crawford — who combined control about 13 percent of the company — said they did not agree with the way Yang handled negotiations. In this excerpt from Yahoo's own Tech Ticker, Sarah Lacy asks Yahoo president Sue Decker, "Who are these institutional shareholders who are supporting $37, $38 per share? Can you shed any light on that?" Watch as Decker explains that what Bostock really meant is that Yahoo's board supports Yahoo's board, which only really ever told shareholders about Microsoft's $31 per share offer. "And that's the end of the story."

9:20 AM on Tue May 6 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,298 views, 8 comments

Latest by dingdongditch: is it me or what.. i'm start to develop a crush on her.... more »

stocks

Post-Microsoft, Yahoo shares "plunge" from $19 to $24.60

What is Yahoo really worth? That's the $44.6 billion question, the one that ultimately split Steve Ballmer and Jerry Yang. Most pundits predicted Yahoo's shares would drop precipitously today, perhaps as low as $19, where they were trading before Microsoft's offer. Instead, they're trading around $24.60 — a 14 percent drop, but a 30 percent premium to the pre-Microsoft price. The shares could drop further over the course of the day, but it's worth asking what's sustaining Yahoo's shares at this level right now. More »

11:20 AM on Mon May 5 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,945 views, 9 comments

Latest by WagCurious: @fogcat5: I'm saying 15% is 15%. Not much on this planet moves 15% in a day. There is a lot of analysis that says once a stock has taken such a pounding it will recover a small amount the next more »

microsoft

Ballmer eyes Facebook, AOL and MySpace as alternatives

Sources familiar with Microsoft tell the WSJ they expect CEO Steve Ballmer to target another large Internet company for acquisition soon. Noting that few companies have the size to boost Microsoft's business, Ballmer himself listed Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace as properties that could help Microsoft control the Internet as it did the personal computer. Others want Ballmer to buy AOL for its massive and cheap inventory. (What, are they pulling for a Nsync reunion tour as well?) Microsoft could easily better Yahoo's $10 billion offer for AOL, says SAI's Henry Blodget. But there's a reason AOL is cheap, people. More »

8:40 AM on Mon May 5 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,625 views, 8 comments

Latest by Torley: or Quantum Link... ;) more »

stocks

Yahoo shares down and dropping

Early trading in Frankfurt, Germany dropped Yahoo shares 22.04 percent to $22.35 per share as of 4:38 a.m. Analysts expect the sell-off to drop the company's value to $30 billion by the end of the day, returning its share price near to where it stood before Microsoft made it's $47.5 billion bid for the company on February 1. "There's frustration," Jacob Internet Fund manager and Yahoo shareholder Darren Chervitz told the AP. "I am not even sure if Yahoo cares about its shareholders because they didn't show much regard for shareholders' best interests in this process."

4:56 AM on Mon May 5 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
861 views, 7 comments

Latest by clearhopo: @DanLar75 - yeah! that's what stock markets are for! Not to get people rich for talking companies up or down or anything. It's so people who don't have anything to do with a company can decide how much they're more »

aol

The three letters Marc Andreessen can't bear to type

Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen, left bored by running a social-networking startup, has much time on his hands to write excellent analyses of the tech industry. His blog post on why Microsoft-Yahoo might fall apart seems prescient in the wake of that deal's failure. But there's one odd thing about his writeup. Read this passage:
Big mergers and acquisitions, particularly among public companies, particularly among public companies that have large shares of their respective markets, can take a year or more between the day the deal is signed and announced, to the day the deal is actually executed and closed. During that year plus, all kinds of things can happen that could cause the deal to fall apart.
More »

7:00 PM on Sat May 3 2008
By Owen Thomas
3,563 views, 5 comments

Latest by ifstone: Yeah, Marc is very busy writing code for Ning, and you can't spell "PHP" without "A-O-L" -- oh, wait, you can. more »

nerdfight

Ballmer to Yang: How stupid are you?

Even when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tries to sound polite, he manages to be rude. His thank-you-very-much letter to Yahoo's Jerry Yang declining to make an offer for Yahoo is no exception. In particular, Ballmer rails against Yang for considering outsourcing search advertising to Google, saying it will cause Yahoo's engineers to flee and raise prices for advertisers. "By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table," Ballmer concludes. If I were Yang, I would read this and wonder why I ever even contemplated getting into business with this guy. The full letter: More »

6:20 PM on Sat May 3 2008
By Owen Thomas
6,358 views, 28 comments

Latest by NotJulia: Maybe you can't ask Yang, but you can ask just someone as incompetent (for free): "DFJ Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar with Sue Decker, President, Yahoo" Date: Wednesday, May 7 Time: 4:30 PM Location: Skilling Auditorium, Stanford University Join us for one hour as Sue shares her more »

Ballmer, sighted in Palo Alto, was there for Yahoo meeting A Valleywag tipster spotted Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and fellow executive Kevin Johnson in Palo Alto on Wednesday. Kara Swisher now confirms they were in California for a meeting with Yahoo. [BoomTown]

1 comment

Yahoo's $37 demand talks, Microsoft's $33 offer walks Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer heeded our advice and walked away from a bid for Yahoo. Did he dodge a potentially career-ending bullet? "The talks broke down this afternoon after a face to face meeting in the Seattle area that included Microsoft CEO Steve ballmer, Microsoft exec. kevin johnson, and Yahoo co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo." [All Things Digital] (Photo by Yodel Anecdotal)

12 comments

Things that have actually happened in the last week, as opposed to the Microsoft-Yahoo deal While we wait on Microsoft-Yahoo, things that have actually happened since Saturday's deadline include: 1.21 billion Google searches, 441 million Yahoo searches, 197 million MSN/Windows Live searches, 4 announcements that news was imminent, and 0 actual announcements. [Beyond Binary]

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