Showing posts with label ‎Acquisition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ‎Acquisition. Show all posts

Monday

Microsoft To Buy LinkedIn For $26.2 Billion

Posted By: Arin Dey - June 13, 2016
Microsoft announced a deal of $26.2 billion today to acquire professional social platform LinkedIn for $196 per share.
 
Microsoft To Buy LinkedIn For $26.2 Billion
Picture Credit : LinkedIn

Immediately, shares of LinkedIn surged 47 percent after the announcement to near $193, while Microsoft's stock was down 3.2 percent. Trading in Microsoft had been halted briefly for news pending before the announcement of the all-cash deal.

Jeff Weiner will stay on as CEO of LinkedIn and will report to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The deal was unanimously approved by both companies' boards, and is expected to close by the end of the year. The acquisition is still subject to approval by LinkedIn shareholders and regulators.

"The LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business centered on connecting the world's professionals," Nadella said in a statement. "Together we can accelerate the growth of LinkedIn, as well as Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics as we seek to empower every person and organization on the planet."

Saturday

Google Acquires Polar To Enhance Social Media Engagement

Posted By: Arin Dey - September 13, 2014
The search giant again came up with its latest acquisition of online poll startup Polar to enhance the Google's social network. The deal and terms were not disclosed but Google confirmed that the Polar team will work on Google+. Polar is proudly announcing its teaming up with Google on its website.
Google Acquires Polar To Enhance Social Media Engagement
Google's vice-president of engineering, Dave Besbris wrote in a brief Google+ post “I’m thrilled to welcome +Luke Wroblewski and the talented Polar team to Google. They’ll be joining our team and helping us make G+ even more awesome.”

Just a two-year-old startup Polar that polls users of its app via Smartphone and tablet to learn users’ preferences. It has served more than half a billion polls in the past eight months and counted 1.1 million active voters as of this month.

Founder of Polar, Luke Wroblewski said “Creating products is a journey. And like any journey, it’s filled with new experiences, missteps, and perhaps most importantly, lots of opportunities to learn,”  “My most recent journey started nearly two years ago when we began working on Polar … I’m delighted to announce we’re joining Google.”

Polar website will be available for its users through the end of the year. It is allowing users to download an archive of the polls and data saved over their network.

Monday

Yahoo Acquires Video Streaming Startup RayV

Posted By: Arin Dey - July 14, 2014
A video streaming startup RayV has been acquired by Yahoo to enhance the quality of mobile content sharing. It also boost the opportunities of Web-based video platform. Since two months Marissa Mayer has been planning to buy the Israeli firm as it prepares for the launch of its Web-based video platform in near future. It will be similar to YouTube but with only high-quality and popular video content that will be selected and approved by Yahoo itself where authorship and account would be verified.

Yahoo Acquires Video Streaming Startup RayV

RayV wa launched in 2005 as a video distribution platform with an aim for online video experience for viewers. RayV explained it in a blog post,

The post says “Our RayV adventure now comes to a pivot, and we couldn’t be more excited. We believe Yahoo will be a perfect fit for our people and capabilities, as Video and Mobile offerings are a central part of Yahoo’s vision. Yahoo’s global scale and broad content base, combined with its amazing leadership and appetite for success, creates an ideal environment for our team to thrive and be pushed to the next level.”

Yahoo has been buying the small companies since 1 to 2 years for improving its mobile and video offerings to the world.

Saturday

Google Acquires mDialog To Boost DoubleClick

Posted By: Arin Dey - June 21, 2014
Google has recently acquired wireless startup Alpental Technologies and video advertising company mDialog to boost up its own unit DoubleClick.It seems that Google is eager to improve its wireless technology and offer more high quality video options to its advertisers. Google’s latest acquisitions deals have not been publicly revealed. 

mDialog will be joining the DoubleClick team at Google and will continue to offer its services to programmers and distributors.

Google Acquires mDialog To Boost DoubleClick

post on the mDialog website stated that “We’re excited to announce that mDialog is joining the DoubleClick team at Google. Longer term, we’re also very excited about combining mDialog with the DoubleClick platform for publishers. Together, we’re looking forward to offering content creators new and even better ways to make money from their live and on-demand content.”

As per Google, this acquisition proves its commitment to offering more ways for publishers to monetize live, linear and on-demand video content across all screens.

Google+ post also stated that “This represents the latest of our ongoing investments in helping brands connect with high-quality video content, like Google Partner Select, our new marketplace for premium programmatic video,”

From several internet sources it is revealed that the purchase of Alpental may be part of the $1-billion commitment Google made earlier this month to bring Internet to remote areas of the globe. It is obvious that Alpental will play an active role in Project Loon, the technology giant’s balloon-powered Internet endeavor to bring the two-thirds of the world’s population with no connection online.

Lets see how it goes and how it helps in Google's future ventures.

Thursday

Apple Buys Beats Electronics For $3B

Posted By: Arin Dey - May 29, 2014
Few sources over internet revealed that Apple is buying Beats Electronics for $3 billion. This acquisition will give the iTunes introducer a boost in the music revolutionized world. In this deal, Apple will acquire the Beats Music and associated businesses. Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre are known to have their fingers on the pulse of all that is current and popular in the music industry.

Apple Buys Beats Electronics For $3B

It will be definitely a valuable asset to Apple as it looks to emphasize on its iRadio service into high as the popularity of streaming services grow day by day.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told USA Today that the company is “gaining rare talent, a fast-growing subscription service and premium headphones that have done incredibly well, but none of those are the reason for doing this deal. It’s the future we’re betting on.” 

Music streaming has become more popular. And from quite sometime iTunes has been the market leader but it has slowed down the progress slightly. Apple wants to be the top music provider inspite of different method of choice. Music has been the choice with high priority for most the people and that's where Iovine and Dre come in.

Cook also added that “We’ve found kindred spirits in Jimmy and Dre, and we’re going to advance what they’ve done to a whole different level."

Beats brand will remain same as it is now. Iovine has worked with the iPhone maker on projects for more than a decade. This deal is a good one for both parties.

Iovine also told USA today that “You feel like when you walk in here, these guys get what we do. Will our products get better? Absolutely; we want our stuff to be made by Apple. But mostly, it’s about feeling that these guys can bridge the gap between the tech and music worlds.”

Tuesday

Google May Acquire Skybox Imaging

Posted By: Arin Dey - May 27, 2014
Google Maps will probably get a boost if the ongoing talks between Google and Skybox regarding acquisition are successful. Skybox is popularly known for the high-definition imagery provider. Google may pay $1 billion to acquire the startup. 

Google May Acquire Skybox Imaging

The satellite company's useful technology which specializes in recording very detailed landscape pictures and video will definitely add huge value to Google Maps and Google Earth services.

Some internet sources are spreading across the rumors that Google may actually be targeting other such companies such as Planet Labs or BlackBridge.

“We have heard that Google is interested in making a play for a satellite imaging company. But there are a number of companies out there that are using small satellites and other technology to record the earth’s terrain that could fit the bill,” the report available.

Google has already acquired American drone manufacturer Titan Aerospace for an undisclosed sum to further its connectivity goals so it is obvious that we would definitely hear some more news regarding the acquisition.

Saturday

Facebook, WhatsApp Acquisition On Privacy Policy Conflicts

Posted By: Arin Dey - March 08, 2014
American privacy units Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy have filed an ‘unfair and deceptive practices’ complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. They accuse Facebook of violating the consent. It also reports that WhatsApp’s more stringent privacy policy conflicts with Facebook’s more open one.

Facebook, WhatsApp Acquisition On Privacy Policy Conflicts

The authority duo is asking the FTC to “halt Facebook’s proposed acquisition of WhatsApp” until the concerns listed in the complaint are “adequately” taken care and meet the policy measures. The main concern is that the acquisition will give Facebook to give access to all of the mobile phone numbers WhatsApp has updated.

The Center for Digital Democracy said in a statement on its website that “The millions of WhatsApp users who signed up for the service were promised — repeatedly as you will read in the complaint — that the company didn’t want to gather and commericialize their data.” 

“They posed as the ‘unFacebook,’ deriding the commercial surveillance apparatus that lies at the core of contemporary online practices. Yet at the same time they made their public privacy promises, they were being wooed by Mark Zuckerberg to join The Circle — oops, I mean Facebook. Despite Facebook’s denial that WhatsApp and its digital gold mine of mobile numbers, address books, and access to selling all kinds of financial services in real-time won’t become part of its Big Data-driven advertising machine, one only has to look at what happened with Instagram (let alone the track record of the industry).”

The FTC has not updated anything yet regarding their investigation on this acquisition.

Thursday

Yahoo Acquires Data Visualization Company Vizify

Posted By: Arin Dey - March 06, 2014
Popular data visualization start-up Vizify has been acquired by Yahoo.The organization is now added to Yahoo to make its site more social. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo has acquired several start-ups to include useful technologies and also these acquisitions have acquired some talented staff members too to facilitates Yahoo operations and  offerings more products in a better way.This acquisition of Vizify. 

Vizify basically offers users a way to create visualizations based on social-media driven data. According to a blog post, their goal is to transform “the information that we all consume and create every day into something more beautiful and personal."

The post states that “Since last summer, we’ve been engaged in a conversation with some of the incredible folks at Yahoo about the ways this more visual approach to data can inspire and entertain. As our conversations progressed, we realized we’d found a partner who shared our passion for user experience, design, and visualizing information. Ultimately, we just couldn’t say no to the opportunity to bring our vision to the hundreds of millions of people who use Yahoo every day. As for what’s next, we can’t talk specifics just yet, but we’re excited to bring a more visual approach to data at Yahoo. We have a lot more up our sleeves and can’t wait to get started.”

Vizify founded in 2011, will close its service as it transfers to Yahoo. So any new signups or purchases of paid plans will no longer be permitted henceforth. But the existing users who have already paid for a plan will receive a full refund while Premium customers who registered a domain through Vizify will be given instructions so they can assume ownership of their domain, free-of-charge. The existing users will have an option to “archive” a snapshot of their bio which will remain live at the same URL through 4th September.

Marissa Mayer has acquired more than 20 small businesses in 2013 as well as six in the first two months of this year. Lets see how Yahoo proceeds further with this acquisition.

Sunday

Rakuten Acquires Viber Messaging App for $900M

Posted By: Arin Dey - February 16, 2014
Rakuten acquired Viber Messaging App for $900 million. Instant messaging and VoIP service operator Viber Media has been snapped by the Japanese electronics company in a bid. Viber will add 300 million users to Rakuten’s current 200 million user base as reported by CEO Hiroshi Mikitani and Viber founder Israeli businessman Talmon Marco.
The Japanese firm Rakuten reported its operating profit reached high 80 percent in 2013. The official announcement of the deal between Rakuten and the Cyprus-based Viber has just come after the company's remarkable profit reach.

Rakuten said in its press release about the sale which will strengthen its global platform through the use of Viber’s range of customers in the company’s eCommerce and digital contents services. Viber founder believes that the deal will become a platform for digital content..

The company stated that “In the past, consumers had been using conventional televisions and fixed line telephones for contents as a means of communication, but this has been shifting to mobile contents and apps. Viber’s globally popular messaging service is seeing a rapid increase in numbers of registered users, and this will strengthen our digital strategy. The Company aims to be the global No. 1 Internet services company, and in addition to our existing e-Commerce and Internet finance services, this acquisition will allow the Company to build on several digital contents services, and advance into new markets.”

‘Rakuten Ecosystem’ enables members to access a variety of services through common ID numbers and the company’s online Rakuten Super Points rewards program. So it is observed that it will complement Viber’s “fun approach” to messaging and VoIP services as per Rakuten report.

Rakuten’s Internet service offerings and its ‘Shopping is Entertainment’ has the potential to become the “world’s most comprehensive and engaging daily online platform.” Hence it seems that this acquisition will serve its customers with better offerings.

Friday

Yahoo Acquires Technical Recruiting Firm Distill

Posted By: Arin Dey - February 14, 2014
Marissa Mayer has always been in news since last year. Yahoo’s CEO has just acquired another start-up and reveals her plan to boost Yahoo’s mobile and social offerings. Distill staff members will be joining Yahoo and will work on the on going projects as planned.

Distill is a San Francisco-based technical recruiting software firm and is best known for its mobile advertising platform Tapjoy. Distill's blog post stated its team “is off to start a new adventure” at Yahoo. They had raised $1.3 million in funding from investors including Felicis Ventures, China’s Innovation Works and DN Capital.

Distill team in its website, shows a message for its users regarding the acquisition.

Yahoo Acquires Technical Recruiting Firm Distill

“Prior to creating Distill, we were part of the original team behind the creation of Tapjoy, a mobile performance-based advertising platform that drove deep engagement and monetization opportunities for mobile app publishers. We’ll be drawing upon our expertise from the Tapjoy days to help build out Yahoo’s mobile advertising solutions.” stated in the blog post.

The Distill platform will remain available through March 30. Mayer has been busy in acquiring more than 20 small businesses last year as well as three last month including smartphone-homescreen launcher Aviate to organize apps on users’ Smartphone home screens, enterprise app maker Tomfoolery and virtual gaming company Cloud Party and maker of the Days diary iPhone app Wander just a day ago.

Among big acquisitions last year, there were Tumblr for $1.1 billion, e-mail management startup Xobni for $70 million and popular news-reading app Summly for nearly $30 million. 

It seems that Yahoo has taken the pace to boost up its production, service and will go with its offerings in all web technology aspects.

Wednesday

Yahoo Acquired Social Diary App Maker Wander

Posted By: Arin Dey - February 12, 2014
Days diary iPhone app maker Wander is the latest acquisition among the small sized companies by Yahoo.

The deal terms and conditions were not disclosed but it was reported CEO Marissa Mayer spent more than $10 million for the start-up acquisition. Wander team members will join Yahoo’s New York City-based Mobile and Emerging Products group.

Yahoo Acquired Social Diary App Maker Wander
Image Credit : iTunes

“We’ve spent the past few years figuring out how to make content creation as habitual as content consumption. That’s the idea behind Days, the daily visual diary we launched in May 2013. Nine months later, we’re excited to announce that we’ve accepted an offer to bring our work on daily habits to Yahoo. We started our company with the vision of transforming daily habits, and we’re proud to be joining a new one that shares that mission” reported in a post on the Days blog. 

The Days app can turn a user’s camera roll into an automatic daily diary of his or her life.  Now the start-up will continue its focus on “some exciting new projects that we can’t talk about just yet".

Marissa Mayer has been busy in acquiring more than 20 small businesses last year as well as last few months. Among the major acquisition on small sized companies, Smartphone-homescreen launcher Aviate, enterprise app maker Tomfoolery and virtual gaming company Cloud Party, Tumblr for $1.1 billion, e-mail management startup Xobni for $70 million and popular news-reading app Summly for nearly $30 million are some recent ones.

Some of the more notable acquisitions last year were Tumblr for $1.1 billion, e-mail management startup Xobni for $70 million and popular news-reading app Summly for nearly $30 million.

Sunday

LinkedIn Acquires Data Provider Bright For $120M

Posted By: Arin Dey - February 09, 2014
The largest professional social network LinkedIn has already paid $32 million in cash and will pay the remaining amount of the settlement in stock options for buying data provider company Bright.
LinkedIn Acquires Data Provider Bright For $120M
Bright uses data insights and matching technology to connect prospects and employers. It will help LinkedIn to improve online matches as well as increase its user base.

Senior vice-president of products and user experience Deep Nishar stated in a blogpost, “What LinkedIn does best is connect talent with opportunity at massive scale. By leveraging Bright’s data-driven matching technology, machine-learning algorithms and domain expertise, we can accelerate our efforts and build out the Economic Graph.”

Bright started its journey in 2011 by the founder Eduardo Vivas. He said the company is excited to join LinkedIn because both firms share a common vision.

Vivas wrote in a blog post, “We share LinkedIn’s passion for connecting talent with opportunity at massive scale. And we agree that the old models for online recruiting are hopelessly broken. Our focus in this endeavor was always the individual — the broken hiring process hurts our economy at a macroeconomic level, but the most acute pain is at the household level. Joining an organization with the talent and resources of LinkedIn will only serve to further ignite our passion for solving this problem. We may become less visible than we were before, but it’s now more likely than ever that you’ll feel the impact of our work.”

Saturday

Yahoo Acquires Incredible Labs And May Challenge Google

Posted By: Arin Dey - February 01, 2014
Marissa Mayer may be the busiest person in the last week. Yahoo’s CEO has acquired yet another start-up this week. Yahoo purchased Incredible Labs to make the search engine firm the go-to site for mobile users. Incredible Labs is the maker of popular personal-assistant app Donna. Now it seems that Yahoo is going to develop a tool which will compete Google Now.
Yahoo clarifies about Donna as a “pretty amazing” app which keeps its users punctual while giving them the information at the time when required. In short, Yahoo states that Donna is “the ultimate daily habit.”

Yahoo also added that “When we met with the team from Incredible Labs, it was an immediate fit. As we look to the future, our visions are aligned in that we think technology should be smart enough to think for us.”

Incredible Labs stated in a blog post that they are “looking forward to the possibilities that will come from bringing the Donna vision—letting technology take care of you—to Yahoo. Upon closing, our team will be joining Yahoo and working with some incredibly talented people, or in the case of some of us, returning to a company we know and love.”

Donna will not be available in app store and discontinued as a service once the entire acquisition process is over. There is a seven person team in Incredible Labs and out of which five will join Yahoo, including CEO Kevin Cheng, a former Yahoo employee.

Newly hired people would be involved into communication team as “where they will work on Yahoo Mail.” Lets see how Yahoo brings changes and compete with Google.

Friday

Google Acquires Artificial Intelligence Company DeepMind

Posted By: Arin Dey - January 31, 2014
Google has recently purchased a London-based artificial intelligence company called DeepMind for $400 million. Google didn't reveal any more details on this but it seems that DeepMind's team will work with Google's search team, some sources on internet revealed. 

“Knowledge” group of Google is not there just to find keywords on Web pages instead experiments broader concepts. "Knowledge is led by Google SVP Alan Eustace, but DeepMind will work closely with a team led by Jeff Dean, a near 15-year Google veteran, best known for his work on distributed systems." stated by Recode.

Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind, expressed his feelings about the acquisition as he thinks that it would make Google search and DeepMind together to bring up new concept.

He added that "We're really excited to be joining Google. This partnership will allow us to turbo-charge our mission to harness the power of machine learning tools to tackle some of society's toughest problems, and help make our everyday lives more productive and enjoyable. We've built a world-leading team here in the UK and we're looking forward to accelerating the impact of our technology with Google."

"DeepMind is a cutting edge artificial intelligence company. We combine the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms. The company is based in London and supported by some of the most iconic technology entrepreneurs and investors of the past decade. Our first commercial applications are in simulations, e-commerce and games." state by the company.


Lets hope for the best result to come up with new technology implemented, modified search engine by the search giant, which will include artificial intelligent system incorporated with search.

Monday

Yahoo Acquires Virtual Gaming Company Cloud Party

Posted By: Arin Dey - January 27, 2014
Here is another buzz from Yahoo and now it purchased virtual gaming company Cloud Party. It seems that Yahoo is planning for a big hit with its products and services. In 2013, Marissa Mayer bought more than 20 small businesses, primarily for the technology they offered. Some of the major acquisitions made by this company were Tumblr for $1.1 billion, e-mail management startup Xobni for $70 million and very known news-reading app Summly for nearly $30 million. The Yahoo CEO Mayer has snapped up several companies within a very short period as part of her plan to obviously give a come back big brand image to Yahoo.


Yahoo wants to redefine its engineering team with this gaming company Cloud Party. This real time gaming service company offers a multi-player, 3D engine that runs directly in a Web browser with no plugins. It was launched in 2011 to create avatars and discover new environments into fashion world.

CEO and co-founder Sam Thompson from Cloud Party wrote in a blog post. “We’re excited to announce that the time has come for the Cloud Party team to start our next adventure, we are joining Yahoo.”

He also added that there are five members in it and they are eager to join team Yahoo and also stated that “that is as passionate about games as we are.”

Anyway till date terms of the deal were not disclosed. Cloud Party will continue to support its users as it has been doing until Feb. 21. After that with soem changes Yahoo will be operating its services. The company is offering its users to preserve their creations, with export tools and written instructions. The existing users or the the people who wants to get support can contact support@cloudpartyinc.com.

Yahoo aka Mayer has recently purchased Smartphone-homescreen launcher Aviate to organize apps on users’ Smartphone home screens. 

Mayer anyhow expressed about her goals that "focusing on mobile" and "offering users a better all-around experience". She wants to make a solid come back for Yahoo into web world soon.

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