M&A

Can Yahoo nab Foursquare for $125 million?

You have to give Yahoo an A for effort, if perhaps the ultimate grade in its ongoing quest to buy hot mobile start-up Foursquare is an F.

While its founder Dennis Crowley--who controls a large chunk of the shares of the start-up--has so far turned down several $100 million-plus offers from Yahoo, sources said its new head of mergers and acquisitions Andrew Siegel is back in New York today still trying to convince him to sell.

So far, especially because the effort has dragged on for a while now and Yahoo has not made an overwhelming show of financial might, … Read more

Facebook buys photo service Divvyshot

Calling it "an offer we can't refuse," the founders of a photo-sharing service called Divvyshot announced Friday that the start-up has been acquired by Facebook. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it's clear that as with Facebook's acquisition of Parakey--and even the far bigger FriendFeed buy--this is an acquisition designed to get the engineering team on board.

Divvyshot, which launched with backing from the Y Combinator incubator, allows for group photo sharing: multiple users can edit albums, which are grouped around various events and places. As part of the acquisition, the … Read more

MySQL's new best friend forever? Oracle

MySQL, once the darling of the database world, is now under attack from all sides. The NoSQL movement questions MySQL's relevance for the Web applications that made it hugely popular. The Drizzle project derides its relevance for the cloud.

MySQL still has one major ally, however, and it's the one that most people thought was its biggest enemy:

Oracle.

The European Commission, among others, worried that Oracle's purchase of Sun, which bought MySQL for $1 billion in 2008, would cripple database competition by stifling MySQL's development. According to Wim Coakaerts, Oracle's Vice President of Linux … Read more

If Novell gets bought, will Red Hat follow?

Elliott's proposed acquisition of Novell promises to shake up the software industry, which has grown a bit staid in the past year or two. But what will it mean for Red Hat, and for the broader open-source software industry?

In particular, Novell's acquisition might well spur a mergers and acquisitions revival, as Barron's notes. But will it create overwhelming pressure for Red Hat to sell, too?

Red Hat has been the subject of buyout rumors for well over a decade, but has never been particularly close to indulging the temptation, according to sources close to the company. … Read more

Novell's buyout and its effect on the industry

For years, Novell has served as an odd bargaining chip between Microsoft and enterprises looking to move to Linux.

Novell's Suse Linux distribution, while a distant No. 2 to Red Hat's leading Linux server business, has helped Microsoft keep some measure of control over its open-source competition--or, at least, to keep a close eye on it.

With Novell now up for grabs through a $1.8 billion buy-out offer from Elliott Associates, what is likely to happen to the Linux market, and to Microsoft, if it goes through?

The easy view is that Red Hat will benefit and … Read more

Mint founder on branding: Keep it simple

MIAMI--Walk around the Future of Web Apps event in South Beach this week, and you'll see loads of eager young entrepreneurs and developers proudly displaying the names of their fledgling companies on their conference badges.

Aaron Patzer, who founded personal-finance site Mint.com and sold it to Intuit for $170 million last year, might tell them that the company name might be the first place to make changes.

"Choose something with meaning, even if it's expensive and difficult to acquire, rather based on domain name availability, because otherwise, you're going to kill word-of-mouth," he told … Read more

AOL: A new buy, a new hire, a CTO hunt

AOL announced Monday that it spent $36.5 million to acquire StudioNow, a start-up that builds technology for online video creation and distribution.

StudioNow be worked into Seed.com, the media clearinghouse that AOL launched late last year--around the same time that it spun off from former parent Time Warner.

Seed.com identifies areas of media coverage that AOL deems to be of interest and then assigns freelance journalists and photographers to the task. The StudioNow acquisition will make it easier for video content to be worked into the mix.

In a somewhat related announcement, AOL has hired former … Read more

EU poised to approve Oracle-Sun deal

The European Commission's approval of Oracle's $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun is imminent. Though EU regulators have until late January to make their decision, sources close to both companies tell me they expect approval this week--perhaps even as early as Wednesday or Thursday. They caution, however, that the EC is nothing if not mercurial; there's always a chance it could fail to reach a quorum, in which case approval will fall closer to the review deadline of January 27.

Either way, the deal is likely to officially close in early February. And when it does, Oracle … Read more

Apple acquires Quattro Wireless

Mobile advertising company Quattro Wireless confirmed Tuesday that it's been acquired by Apple, in a blog post by Quattro CEO Andy Miller, who's identifying himself now as Apple vice president of mobile advertising.

A price wasn't named, but AllThingsD reported that it's $275 million when it broke the news on Monday.

The announcement comes as Apple increasingly finds itself going head-to-head with Google in new developments in the mobile market. In November, Google announced its $750 million acquisition of AdMob, a Quattro competitor. Government regulatory bodies, however, may slow down that purchase.

Google also just unveiled the Nexus One, … Read more