In an investor call Monday morning, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said Yahoo and Tumblr’s audiences really don’t overlap. She said that’s fine: Yahoo users will be exposed to more Tumblr content, and Tumblr gets a new ad strategy and possible Flickr integration while remaining a separate site. Read more »
Yahoo has officially acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion, the companies announced Monday morning. Tumblr will be operated as a separate business, with David Karp remaining CEO. Read more »
Exitround is a new venture by an entrepreneur looking to facilitate communication between companies and potential buyers, giving entrepreneurs the opportunity to explore the acquisition market in a private way. Read more »
Why would Apple acquire a company with a handful of web designers when it has plenty of its own already? The answer could lie in Particle’s specialty, which appears to be looking at new ways of displaying content on a variety of devices using HTML5. Read more »
In its first acquisition, New York-based beauty discovery startup Birchbox has acquired JolieBox, a Paris-based subscription beauty company. With the purchase, Birchbox expands its footprint to France, the United Kingdom and Spain. Read more »
Here’s our daily pick of stories about Apple from around the web that you shouldn’t miss. Today’s installment: What could Apple buy?, predicting iOS shipments in the future, how Apple almost ended development of the original iPhone, and Samsung’s side of the patent spat. Read more »
Acquisitions can add to your earnings, speed your entry into new markets, and help you acquire intellectual property more quickly. But like a marriage, acquisitions should never be decided on a whim. M&A advisor Marty Wolf offers his advice on how to create a lasting union. Read more »
A flurry of reports suggest Facebook is interested in buying Israeli image recognition startup Face.com. But reports from Moscow suggest the rumor mill could be turning because Russian search engine Yandex wants to sell its stake in the firm to Mark Zuckerberg. Read more »
Although the goal for most startup founders might be to build your company’s value, many companies are inadvertently taking steps to kill it. Marty Wolf, the founder of Martinwolf M&A advisors, explains the 5 things you need to avoid. Read more »
In a move that echoes Amazon’s purchase of Zappos back in 2009, Russian web store Ozon is buying online shoe seller Sapato.ru — a deal that Ozon CEO Maelle Gavet says will turn it into a “powerhouse online retailer”. Read more »
Reports say Apple is buying a maker of flash memory technology for up to $500 million. Apple hasn’t confirmed or commented on the deal, but it does seem to fit with Apple’s M.O. when it comes to acquisitions and its overarching strategy. Read more »
Nobody was surprised when Gowalla announced that it would be shutting down after selling to Facebook — after all, almost none of the services it has bought in the past five years have stayed alive. But is this sell up-shut down approach fair on users? Read more »
EMC, having spent billions on acquisitions over the last few years, ain’t done yet. At the top of the shopping list is more security, more management and more data analytics know-how, EMC’s Pat Gelsinger told reporters today at an event at Gillette Stadium. Read more »
EMC CEO Joe Tucci gave a lecture at the University of Washington last night in which he said EMC spent $10.5 billion on research and development and $14 billion on acquisitions between 2003 and 2010, numbers that should only rise over the next eight years. Read more »
Ever since it emerged from Chicago’s small startup community in 2008, Groupon has had nothing short of a spectacular story in terms of its growth: With estimated annual revenues of more than $4 billion after just three years of existence, the poster child for the “group ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Apple and Google have both picked up multiple smaller companies in recent years, and even some larger ones like Motorola, and both can afford to grab more. It can be hard to keep straight who bought what when, but this graphic should set things straight. Read more »
Plenty of web entrepreneurs share the same dream: build a great company and then cash in by selling it to Google, Facebook or another technology giant. But being successful is complicated affair, according to those who have seen those deals from the inside. Read more »
After overseeing 75 acquisitions in 7 years at Cisco in the 1990s, then-CSO Mike Volpi helped the company become a role model for tech M&A and an acquisition-as-growth strategy. In this second post of a two-part series, he reveals four more strategies for smart acquisitions. Read more »
After overseeing 75 acquisitions in seven years at Cisco in the 1990s, then-CSO Mike Volpi helped the company become a role model for tech M&A and an acquisition-as-growth strategy. In this two-part series, he reveals six ways companies can make sure their acquisitions create value. Read more »
LinkedIn made its NYSE debut Thursday morning with a bang, with an IPO that made $352.8 million for the company. The question now is: What will LinkedIn buy with its new cash? Here’s a short list of startups that could make it onto LinkedIn’s shopping list. Read more »
VMware has acquired IT management provider Shavlik Technologies in an attempt to simplify for small- and medium-sized business the process of managing their machines. Shavlik brings an interesting set of new capabilities to VMware, including the ability to manage physical machines and a SaaS delivery model. Read more »
Photobucket wants to reclaim a spot at the top of the crowded photo and video sharing space, and it’s prepared to open its wallet to do so. The company is actively looking at potential acquisition targets, CEO Tom Munro told me in an interview this week. Read more »
Limelight has spent the last few years acquiring pieces and tacking on new value-added services to its legacy CDN business. Adding a content management system like Clickability could make it even easier for its customers to manage and monetize digital media across their web properties. Read more »
Zynga has been on a tear recently, buying 12 smaller games studios in the past year. But its latest purchase, British mobile development outfit Wonderland, gives a strong indication of what the red-hot company intends all of its spending to achieve. Read more »
ParAccel’s competition all got bought, leaving the company standing all but alone as an independent company dedicated to the cause of big data. But with a solid product and a steady business channel to boost a large vendor’s bottom line, it shouldn’t be alone for long. Read more »
VMware has expanded its cloud computing reach once again by acquiring WaveMaker, a startup focused on letting users build cloud applications without having to write code. It’s just the latest move by VMware to grow its platform business by bringing in all the developers it can. Read more »
Why do Yahoo and Google have such a miserable track record when it comes to acquiring startups like Flickr, Delicious and Dodgeball? It’s the nature of the beast — startups and big companies are two completely different animals, and blending their DNA often just doesn’t work. Read more »
After a $15.7 billion fourth quarter that put Dell over the $60 billion revenue mark for the year, Michael Dell got to talking once again about his company’s acquisition strategy, suggesting that more software purchases are indeed on the way. Read more »
Twitter has been having talks about a possible acquisition by either Google or Facebook, according to a WSJ report — and both companies could probably benefit from such a deal. But would an acquisition by either one be good for the service or its users? Read more »
It seems like every year since 2008 has been dubbed the “Year of the Cloud,” but I think 2010 was it. There are legitimate trends that allow us to get past mere speculation and actually make informed predictions about what the future holds for cloud computing. Read more »
Cisco this morning announced its intent to acquire LineSider Technologies, a purchase that will give Cisco advanced capabilities in managed virtualized network resources. As Cisco evolves its cloud computing capabilities, especially, technologies that make network management more dynamic will make Cisco a more-appealing choice. Read more »
Today’s news underscores my feeling that 2011 will be a huge year for cloud computing. Aside from CloudBees’ funding, we have Mellanox buying Voltaire, rumors of Oracle buying Salesforce.com, Enomaly continuing to push cloud brokerages, and questions about whether Intel’s Open Data Center Alliance can succeed. Read more »
Attachmate, a privately held software vendor, bought Novell, the once-powerful enterprise networking player, for $2.2 billion. The interesting part of this story, however, is not who bought Novell, but who didn’t – namely, VMware. In fact, bitter VMware rival Microsoft might end up with some valuable assets. Read more »
AWS’s GPU Instances aside, today is all about money. On top of the $2.25 billion EMC is paying for Isilon, scale-out SAN vendor Coraid closed a $25 million Series B round, and one research firm predicts NoSQL to be a $1.8 billion market by 2015. Read more »
The action in the data warehouse/analytic database space has been hot and heavy over the past couple weeks, with new funding, acquisitions and partnerships announced seemingly every day. It likely won’t slow down anytime soon, and here are a few acquisitions that may be coming down ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The action in the data warehouse/analytic database space has been hot and heavy over the past couple weeks, with new funding, acquisitions and partnerships announced seemingly every day, and this trend is unlikely to slow. I predict a few more acquisitions coming down the pike. Read more »
Still wondering if cloud computing is the real deal, if it will find its way to a data center near you? Whether they’re buying, building or buddying up, vendors are surrounding their core competencies with everything they’ll need to compete in an increasingly integrated IT market. Read more »
Google has amended its offer to acquire the video encoding company On2 Technologies, throwing in another $26.5 million in cash to sweeten the deal. The move comes after months of protest by On2 shareholders, who filed lawsuits and threatened not to vote in favor of it. […] Read more »
Limelight Networks, in a bid to get into the fast-growing online ad-serving business, has agreed to purchase EyeWonder for $110 million in cash and stock. The company expects the deal, which it hopes will close in the first half of 2010, to add some $40 million […] Read more »
General Electric and Vivendi have agreed to a $5.8 billion valuation for the latter’s 20 percent stake in NBC Universal, according to multiple reports, making the prospect of a Comcast-NBC joint venture more likely. By agreeing to a purchase price for Vivendi’s stake, GE can move […] Read more »
