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2008 Is the Year of the Acquisition: The Only Question Now Is, "Who's Next?"

Microsoft Bids on Yahoo!, Amazon buys Audible; "Who's next and how much?"
By Mark R. Hinkle
Article Rating:
February 8, 2008 07:45 AM EST
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 3,768
Mark Hinkle's Socialized Software Blog

Is 2008 going to be the Year of the Acquisition?  Activity in 2007 was on the rise but now things seem to be at full speed.

I remember when Alta Vista and Excite! were the hot search engines, my how the world has changed.  It looks like it’s narrowing down to a two horse race with Microsoft putting the moves on Yahoo! for about $44.6 billion (Notes from SearchEngineLand). I guess it’s really on now, Google versus Microsoft in a search engine death match.

Yahoo! acquired Zimbra last year. I wonder what that means for the "Exchange killer"?

Amazon is acquiring Audible.com the leading provider of digital spoken word content establishing itself even further as the web’s biggest superstore.

There were already three open source transactions in January:

MySQL bought by Sun
Nokia Buys Trolltech
Covalent was Acquired by SpringSource

In preparation Andrew Aiken and the boys from the Olliance Group are ready to help along the deals with their newly formed M&A practice. 

Published February 8, 2008 – Reads 3,768
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Mark R. Hinkle

Mark Hinkle is the Vice President of Community at Zenoss Inc. the maker of the open source application, server, and network management software. He also is along-time open source expert and advocate. He is a co-founder of both the Open Source Management Consortium and the Desktop Linux Consortium. He has served as Editor-in-Chief for both LinuxWorld Magazine and Enterprise Open Source Magazine. Hinkle is also the author of the book, "Windows to Linux Business Desktop Migration" (Thomson, 2006). His blog on open source, technology, and new media can be found at http://www.socializedsoftware.com.

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Most Recent Comments
Werner Keil 02/09/08 07:51:43 AM EST

Well it seems you considered Oracle buys BEA as Activity in 2007?
It has only been closed in 2008, but since January is still part of the last Quarter 2007, that looks like the reason..
Prognosticator 02/08/08 07:49:55 AM EST

Why not Sybase? It just had the best quarter and year in its 23-year history. Ripe for takeover!!!