Microsoft bidding up acquisitions on purpose? Robert Scoble headlines. Sound crazy? Another crazy DoubleClick fallout hypothesis: The losers were only interested in spying on DoubleClick operations. Would a Morgan Stanley managed multi-billion dollar sale of a competitively sensitive privately held business owned by professional investors really be run...
What does it take to “make the Internet more efficient for end users, advertisers, and publishers,” all in one fell swoop? A single Google check for $3.1 billion made out to DoubleClick!Google’s world wide mastery of SPIN continues, big time, in its determined takeover of the World Wide Web:...
Will the real Google PLEASE stand-up! Google CEO Eric Schmidt and company are saying some wild and “crazy” things, literally.I heard Schmidt tell Wall Street last month that it is still “unclear” how revenue will be generated from its $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube while nevertheless expressing supreme confidence...
The acquisition of SpringSource by VMWare, combined with Friendfeed's acquisition by Facebook, clears the decks for Benchmark Capital to make new investments. Kudos to the venture capital VC firm's general partner Peter Fenton, who shepherded both success stories through the venture capital process. The...
Sir Richard Branson unveiled his latest aircraft, or rather spacecraft. In a few years, for $200,000, thrill seekers will be able to ride into sub-orbit space. Separately, Virgin Galactic landed a $280 million investment from Abu Dhabi's Aabar Investments. In this raw video, you get a look at...
Yesterday, Workday announced it had raised $75 million in Series E venture financing. The investors in this round included company founder Dave Duffield, Greylock Partners a firm Aneel Bhusri joined after his PeopleSoft days, as well as VC firm NEA Ventures. NEA is the new player in the mix. ...
In December Peter Kim took to his network to crowdsource and create his 2009 social media predictions. One such predictor was Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst with Forrester in the social computing group, who said "The recession will force revenue results out of social technologies." The key word here is "force."...
Could Google, Microsoft and Yahoo be the equivalent of Ford, GM and Chrysler more than 60 years ago? That thought provoking question was raised by Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay, who cooks up weekend missives designed to make you go hmmm. The argument is an interesting one. Lindsay...
U.S. Business Journal-- The Most Comprehensive Daily Business Newspaper on the Internet now on Mobile PhonesBusiness News for your BlackBerry-- Monthly Subscription $19.95By Bastien Business PublicationsReceive the latest business news on companies nationwide in a comprehensive, time-saving format designed specifically for mobile device users. The U.S. Business Journal reports the...
The news that Google is close to launching its own venture capital fund may raise a lot of hopes, but the history of corporate investment isn't fantastic and comes with a heavy price for portfolio companies that win a corporate sweepstakes. It also tells a lot about Google's own sense...
Can Jonathan Miller do for Yahoo what he tried to do for AOL? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Investor Carl Icahn, who reached a compromise with Yahoo this morning to avoid a nasty proxy battle for seats on the company's board of directors,...
The flurry of attention around yesterday's Microsoft/ Powerset news set me thinking once more about UK-based True Knowledge, which has been compared with Microsoft's latest acquisition. TechCrunch UK's Mike Butcher reported last month that nameless venture capital firms were valuing True Knowledge at about £20million ($40million), and...
Will+open+source+be+a+victim+in+the+Dot+Bomb+2.0%3FInsightfulSometimes in your moments of doubt I agree with you. Though in this article you might have mentioned that "open source" companies have already flared and burnt out once before. Leaving a few hardy if minor survivors.(Minor as you indicated in this comment:But real profits have been tough...
Specialist SaaS hoster OpSource today has announced the acquisition of SaaS billing vendor LeCayla Technologies. OpSource has a number of partners that offer services to its customers, some of them integrated into its real-time service bus â€" including Aria Systems, another billing vendor â€" but this is the first time...
Updated: Sun Microsystems is taking the plunge into the database market with the purchase of open source database developer MySQL for $1 billion ($800 million in cash in exchange for all MySQL stock and assumption of approximately $200 million in options). With the move, announced Wednesday, Sun...
Since Workday publicly appeared on the scene in January 2006, it has been self-described as a "revolutionary application platform and the next generation of business applications to drive your enterprise's performance," with applications that will be "dramatically easy to use, be responsive to your organization's changing needs and will...
Sprint and Clearwire are pooling resources in a venture that could take WiMax nationwide.The two companies said Thursday that they plan to build a national WiMax network. The partnership, which is a 20-year agreement with three 10-year renewal terms, will enable a "broader and more efficient deployment of a mobile...
Google has announced its second acquisition in the computer security space, shelling out a whopping $625 million in cash to snap up enterprise e-mail security vendor Postini.The deal, which follows May's purchase of GreenBorder Technologies, confirms Google's big push into a lucrative security compliance marketplace and gives the search...
In mapping out the online office suite landscape, Zoho stood out as the most expansive and ambitious undertaking. Almost every week the company makes an announcement about a new application or feature. This week Zoho’s Web conferencing application, Meeting, was opened for public beta. Next week Zoho for iPhone, which...