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Posts Tagged ‘m&a’

Google has announced its latest acquisition , an Israeli company that builds iGoogle and Android gadgets. The Israeli financial news site TheMarker speculates the deal’s value at $25M. While LabPixies does seem like a natural fit for Google, some speculate this is just the latest volley in the building Apple v. Google war. Just last week, Google snapped up Agnilux , a startup founded by former Applers. While the LabPixies acquisition will help Google expand further across Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the most direct threat to Apple is that LabPixies also designs widgets and apps for the iPhone. MediaPost reports: Though a bit player, the fact that LabPixies develops personalized Web gadgets for the iPhone won’t be lost on some analysts who’ve speculated that Google buys companies just to annoy Apple. Who, Google? No way. Google wouldn’t buy the most popular advertising platform on iPhone apps , or a company that doesn’t even seem to have a product or strategy just to bug Apple, right? I mean, they’d just bring out one of the first real challengers to the iPhone , right? What do you think? Is this just another jab at Apple, or is Google more motivated by LabPixies’ actual offerings?

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Google Acquires LabPixies to Tick off Apple

Yahoo’s earnings are looking up already from the MicroHoo deal. Microsoft and Yahoo have managed to remind investors by “ finalizing ” the deal every quarter since its announcement. This time, however, it was the DoJ that gave them that boost when it finally approved the deal in February . Along with the beginning of reimbursement payments, it looks like the deal was enough to persuade investors and advertisers alike. Reports CNET : Revenue in the first quarter was $1.6 billion, up just 1 percent from the first quarter of last year. Excluding traffic acquisition costs, net revenue was $1.13 billion, or roughly flat with analyst expectations of $1.17 billion. Revenue from display advertising on Yahoo’s site grew 20 percent compared to the prior year. Net income was $310 million during the quarter, but that included several unexpected benefits, such as the sale of Zimbra and the beginning of reimbursement payments from Microsoft under the terms of the search deal finalized in February. Excluding those items, Yahoo’s earnings per share during the quarter were still 15 cents, ahead of estimates of 11 cents. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz agrees—”Large advertisers came back,” she said in the conference call. She also said they finally recovered—well, stabilized—from the decline in their stocks that began when the deal was announced in July. CNET also reports on the long-term benefits of the deal vs. the short-term gains: Yahoo provided some clarity during the earnings call on how the Microsoft deal will affect its bottom line this year. The company saw a one-time benefit during the quarter of about $43 million related to transition costs, but will also see cost reimbursements from Microsoft for continuing to operate Yahoo’s back-end search organization during the transition, said Tim Morse, Yahoo’s chief financial officer. These operating cost reimbursements totaled just $35 million in the first quarter, but are expected to fall between $75 million and $85 million a quarter over the remainder of the year, he said. What do you think? Will Bingahoo save Yahoo? Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

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Yahoo Earnings Up On Search Deal Hopes

I suspect Google’s decision to buy Plink , was not motivated by the start-ups amazing ability to analyze mobile pictures of artwork and recognize them. I’m confident that Google’s not going to launch Google Art Critic anytime soon. However, it’s entirely possible that Google has acquired Plink simply to gain access to the two PhD students–Mark Cummins and James Philbin–behind the visual recognition app. In fact, according to a blog post by the founders, they’re ready to abandon their PlinkArt app and roll-up their sleeves for Google: PlinkArt will continue to be available for download and work as it currently does today. However, we won’t be updating the app and will instead focus our development efforts on Google Goggles, so you’ll see new functionality appearing there in the future. Of course, no one can blame them for selling their company. It’s barely 4 months old and now they’ll have Google’s billions of dollars at their disposal and get to work on Google Goggles .

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Google Pops Across the Pond to Purchase Plink

While you were either a) drooling over your new iPad, or b) wishing those that had a new iPad would shut-up already, Google went out and bought a company you’ve never heard of. What’s pretty cool about Episodic’s announcement of their acquisition is that they admit you’ve probably never heard of them. I’ve seen many acquisition announcements that had me scratching my head and saying out loud, “who are these guys?” Episodic answers that exact question for us: What is Episodic? Episodic is a comprehensive platform for broadcasting live and on-demand video to the web or any web-enabled device. The platform lets publishers and marketers host, stream, measure and monetize video content. Content creators, marketers and enterprise customers use Episodic to deliver video to the Web and mobile devices. Oh, I see. Of course, I can distill that entire answer down to just two words. See if you notice the difference: …monetize video… Subtle huh? But, that’s exactly the reason that Episodic was so attractive to Google. Sure, the live, on-demand, web-enabled, video streaming is nice, but I suspect it was the fact that advertising was baked into the service that attracted Google. I’d embed one of Episodic’s cool videos and show you how their monetization platform works, but sadly, embedding is apparently something Episodic is not good at.

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Google Acquires a Video Company You’ve Never Heard Of!

Now here’s a great way to gather totally, completely unbiased information about a potential merger: ask the companies’ competitors. Okay, so the FTC isn’t completely crazy—of course other companies in the market would have a pretty good idea what the industry looks like and what a big merger might do. But still, we can only hope the FTC will remember to take their opinions with a grain of competitive salt. AdMob, the popular mobile advertising company, and Google, the wanna-be-popular mobile advertising company, announced the deal in November . Google gave AdMob $750M in stock in the deal. The next month, consumer groups began lobbying against the deal . Now the FTC wants both advertisers and rivals to make sworn statements about the pending merger. The probe isn’t public, but sources say the commission is “investigating whether Google’s proposed purchase of AdMob would reduce competition in the market for Internet advertising on mobile phones.” (Kind of a duh.) Google says it’s continuing to talk with the FTC and cooperate with requests for information. Bloomberg consulted Thomas Ensign, an antitrust lawyer, on the matter. He said, “It’s difficult to envision a scenario where this development, if true, is positive for Google-AdMob, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the agency is going to challenge the deal.” Just over a year ago, the US Department of Justice was hours from filing anti-trust charges against the search giant over another major advertising deal (with Yahoo) . Is Google pushing their luck with this merger? Will GoogleMob hurt the mobile ad industry? Will the FTC stop the deal?

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FTC Still Examining GoogleMob—Wants Feedback from Rivals