acquisitions | Internet Marketing Blog

HP saves Palm, or does it?

After serving as the subject of rumors, the struggling mobile device company has a new owner, HP. The tech giant paid $1.2bn for the company that invented the smartphone.

Not only was HP not one on the list of companies thought to be looking closely at a Palm acquisition, but one might even question why HP was interested in Palm in the first place. The answer: HP has big goals in the mobile arena, and thinks Palm's technology and expertise can help it achieve them.

by Patricio Robles 29 April 2010 12:00pm 0 comments

StyleFeeder, Time Warner, and future of affiliate marketing

In mid-December 2009 the ShareASale affiliate network announced the winners of its 2009 Performance Awards. The "Exceptional Affiliate" prize went to a promising affiliate marketing company operating out of Cambridge, Massachusetts: StyleFeeder. A month later, the site was bought by Time Inc., the largest magazine publisher in the U.S.

by Geno Prussakov 03 February 2010 00:08am 7 comments

Will MySQL falter under Oracle's ownership?

Oracle's pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems apparently has some users of MySQL worried. MySQL, of course, is the open source database owned by Sun and offered freely under a GNU General Public License.

It's the most popular open source RDBMS in the world, and is used with popular products like WordPress and on major websites like Facebook and Wikipedia.

by Patricio Robles 08 December 2009 12:55pm 1 comment

Nokia officially announces Dopplr acquisition

Although reports of the acquisition had been circling since last week, Nokia made it official today: it has acquired London and Helsinki-based mobile travel startup Dopplr for an undisclosed amount. According to rumors, the acquisition price is somewhere between €10 million and €15 million.

Dopplr, which currently has seven employees, will join Nokia's services division. According to Nokia's press release, "The acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service which is available at Dopplr.com and on platforms where Dopplr is integrated".

by Patricio Robles 28 September 2009 16:51pm 1 comment

Is Adobe's $1.8bn acquisition of Omniture setting up a big e-commerce play?

If M&A activity is a good indicator of the health of the economy, there's hope for a recovery, at least in tech. Newsworthy acquisitions are becoming more frequent and yesterday saw a billion-dollar deal with Adobe's announcement that it is purchasing business optimization software provider Omniture.

The deal, which is valued at $1.8bn, was hailed by Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen as "a game changer for both Adobe and our customers". And it better be, as Adobe's offer of $21.50 per share for Omniture stock represents a 24% premium to Omniture's closing price on Tuesday.

by Patricio Robles 16 September 2009 10:47am 9 comments

Mint.com makes a mint, being acquired for $170m

More M&A: publicly-traded software company Intuit is acquiring personal finance upstart Mint.com for $170m. Mint.com, which launched at TechCrunch40 in 2007 and had raised nearly $32m from investors, has over 1.5m users and tracks more than $50bn in assets for its users.

Mint.com is simple: it allows users to aggregate data for their bank, credit and investment accounts and track those accounts through a single interface. Through this, Mint.com can help users identify areas for savings (it claims to have found over $300m in potential savings for its users) and promote financial services that users may be interested in.

by Patricio Robles 14 September 2009 18:52pm 1 comment

Is M&A back?

At this time a year ago, the global economy was imploding. We were in uncharted territory. Banks were on the brink. Lending dried up. Private equity was sitting tight. The wheels of the financial markets had stopped moving.

Flash forward to today. While there's still lots of debate about what the future holds and there's good reason to believe that we're not out of the woods yet, in some industries executives are feeling more confident. In the tech and media worlds, there are signs of life in the M&A markets.

by Patricio Robles 04 September 2009 09:03am 0 comments

Facebook can't have Twitter, so it buys FriendFeed

By most accounts, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg really likes Twitter. And as the 20-something CEO of a company that has raised over $750m, it's only natural that he'd want it, literally. There's just one problem: when Facebook tried acquiring Twitter earlier in the year, it was turned down. The reason: Twitter didn't buy into the $15bn valuation Facebook was basing its share price on as part of the proposed deal.

So Facebook has finally done what many do when rejected: you settle for your second choice. And it this case, that means FriendFeed, which it acquired yesterday.

by Patricio Robles 11 August 2009 09:02am 6 comments

Publicis Groupe pulls the trigger on Razorfish acquisition

As reported before, Microsoft has been looking to sell digital agency Razorfish, a business it acquired through its $6bn purchase of ad services holding company aQuantive in 2007.

Yesterday, it announced a deal: Publicis Groupe, the world's second largest media agency, will be buying Razorfish for $530m in cash and Publicis Groupe treasury shares.

by Patricio Robles 10 August 2009 09:16am 1 comment

Friends no more: ITV finally dumps Friends Reunited

When times are good, the internet is responsible for memorable stories of rapid riches. But economic downturns are different. Even through parts of the internet economy have held up well, relatively speaking, in this economic downturn there are a growing number of gold to lead stories.