Posts tagged “acquisitions”

Microsoft walked away from acquiring Yahoo, but it may not be over. Ballmer looks weak, Yahoo comes out bruised but okay, and Google is the real winner here, having watched its two biggest rivals spend months in chaos. Oh, and I'm relieved.

Working at Yahoo! and hearing Microsoft wants to buy us feels like waking up to an invasion. Microsoft may be capable, but their DNA is fundamentally at odds with the open, interconnected web culture Yahoo! embodies. I hope this deal falls apart, but I fear it won't.

Facebook apps are buying each other for $60k with no revenue, no business model, nothing. The bubble is on. I predicted a 24x revenue acquisition in September; Business.com is already tipping at that multiplier. Let's see if my timing is right too.

Private equity just paid $1.5B for NexTag at roughly 19x earnings, higher than recent acquisitions of aQuantive (14x) and DoubleClick (10x). The bubble is inflating nicely. If we hit 24x earnings by September, I'm launching GigaSeldo.

CBS paid $280M for Last.fm after Yahoo! balked at $30M a year ago. It's a desperate move by a company with no new media chops, and Last.fm could have found a smarter buyer. Likely to end badly.

Microsoft's $6B acquisition of aQuantive is a desperate play to compete in the online ad space frenzy. I don't see it working. At best it keeps them treading water, at worst they end up an irrelevant OS supplier in a world that's moved on to server-side apps.