Google Inc. has signed a letter of intent with Kevin Rose to purchase the social news site Digg.com for around $200 million, tech blog TechCrunch reported.
In contrast to Google News, where the stories are selected by computer algorithm, Digg’s news stories are submitted by users and ranked according to user approval ratings. It is known that Google was interested in using Digg’s technology to help improve its search results by having users vote on their quality.
Digg was formed in 2004 by young entrepreneur Kevin Rose who used a programmer he found online for $10 an hour. It is known that he paid $1,200 dollars for the domain name digg.com and $100 a month for hosting it, which is now ranked as one of the 100 most trafficked sites on the Internet by Alexa.
Digg has so far raised around $11.3 million in VC. Most of Digg’s revenue comes from a three-year ad deal with Google rival Microsoft, which may be terminated on a sale to Google, TechCrunch said. Ouch !
Google plans to make an unspecified number of job cuts at DoubleClick Inc following the closing of its $3.1 billion acquisition of the advertising technology company.
“An immediate task we’ll undertake over the next few weeks is matching and aligning DoubleClick employees with our organizational plan for the business,” Google said in a blog post.
“As with most mergers, there may be reductions in headcount. We expect these to take place in the US and possibly in other regions as well,” the company said. DoubleClick has 1,500 employees. Outside of the United States, Google will begin consultations with employee organizations on potential job reductions in line with local laws, it said.
On Tuesday, February 26, Sun announced it completed the acquisition of MySQL, the world’s most popular open source database
The billion dollar acquisition makes it the largest open source software deal ever and makes Sun the owner of a critical part of the popular LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL Perl/Python/PHP) open source software stack!
SEATTLE: Microsoft Corporation plans to invest heavily in Web search to compete against Google Inc, even if it fails to acquire Yahoo Inc, the company’s chairman Bill Gates said.
“We can afford to make big investments in the engineering and marketing that needs to get done. We will do that with or without Yahoo,” said Gates in an interview with Reuters.
The two companies are at a stand-off in Microsoft’s $41.7 billion unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo. Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo for $31 a share in cash and stock, a bid which Yahoo’s board rejected, saying it undervalued the company.Microsoft countered by saying its offer was “full and fair,” but did not say what it planned to do next. Analysts expect Microsoft to sweeten its bid, possibly to $35 a share, to clinch a deal.
Take-Two has refused an offer by Electronic Arts to acquire the troubled publisher for $2 billion, GamesIndustry.biz reports.
Although Take-Two [GTA publisher] has rejected the cash offer, EA has decided to keep the offer open. The offer is a 63% stake on Take-Two’s closing price over the previous 30 days, and a 64% premium over Take-Two’s closing price on 15th February, the last trading day before EA sent its revised proposal to Take-Two.
EA sent a letter of proposal to Take-Two on 19th February, which has been rejected by the board of directors and executive chairman Strauss Zelnick.
“Take-Two’s game designers would also benefit from EA’s financial resources, stable, game-focused management team, and strong global publishing capabilities.”
Yahoo’s directors meeting is going on and a decision on part of yahoo is expected soon. Speaking on Microsoft/Yahoo, interviewed by Gavin Esler, with Robert Scoble in San Francisco, on Fri 1st Feb 2008.Copyright BBC,strictly.
Google plans to make an unspecified number of job cuts at DoubleClick Inc following the closing of its $3.1 billion acquisition of the advertising technology company.
