Yahoo is rumoured to be working on an attempted takeover of Bebo, Britain’s most popular social networking site, which could turn its British-born founder into the next internet billionaire.

Yahoo, one of the first big online portals, is thought to be willing to pay as much as $1bn for the site, according to Silicon Valley gossip.

NewsCorp paid $580m for MySpace in 2005, in a deal that first drew the market’s attention to the phenomenon. Google paid $1.76bn for YouTube, the internet home video site, last November.

Bebo has around 25m users worldwide, compared with MySpace’s 100m or so registered users. Birch is rumoured to have turned down an offer from BT worth about £300m last summer. Viacom, the US media giant which was outbid for MySpace, is also believed to have made an offer last year. Bebo is backed by Benchmark Capital, the private equity firm.

Yahoo made a $1bn bid for Facebook, another fast-growing social networking site, last year. The offer was rejected by the site’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

Friendster, one of the first social networking sites, turned down an all-share offer from Google in 2003, which would have been worth about $1bn to its founders today. It has since drifted out of favour with internet consumers, with the monthly traffic on its site dwarfed by newer sites - such as Bebo. (Ouch!!)

Reported last week that Microsoft was in talks to buy Yahoo for a rumored $50 Billion, if this deal goes through Microsoft would significantly increase its online advertising market share which is now dominated by Google. The Redmond giant would own two of the biggest social networking properties on the web, Bebo and their very own Live Spaces.

Although, the Telegraph (who broke the news) isn’t exactly known for breaking tech M&A stories, and the rumor has an exceptionally weak source - “according to silicon valley gossip” the article says. That sounds like something the Telegraph’s correspondent overheard after ten or twelve cocktails last night at a party. And while I don’t doubt that Yahoo is sniffing around Bebo, $1 billion seems a tad high for the service.

Popularity: 40% [?]

A few weeks back we reported that “Photobucket was out of space” which was a play on the fact that Myspace had blocked the photosharing/widget site. Ironically, this led to acquisition talks and now its been confirmed Myspace has bought Photobucket for $250 million in cash with another $50 mil in the pipeline.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 37% [?]

Microsoft to acquire Yahoo in the biggest acquisition in IT history! Full story over at Mashable

This deal will be huge if it goes ahead: Microsoft has reacted to Google’s purchase of DoubleClick by stepping up talks with Yahoo about a possible acquisition/merger. Estimated pricetag for Yahoo? $50 billion. Microsoft and Yahoo have spoken in the past, but Google has piled on the pressure with the DoubleClick deal and now Microsoft has asked Yahoo to re-enter talks about the acquisition, says the NYPost. The price estimate, meanwhile, comes from Wall Street analysts.

Apparently the Yahoo stock is rising because of the buy out talk.

Shares of Yahoo Inc. surged more than 17% on Friday after reports that Microsoft may try to buy the Internet-search firm after being beaten to other deals by Google Inc. A Yahoo-Microsoft combo would make for a stronger foil to Google, the Internet search engine and advertising giant. Shares of Yahoo (YHOO) rallied sharply in early Friday action after the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft may want to buy the firm in what could be a $50 billion deal. Shares of Microsoft (MSFT) slipped more than 1%.

Yahoo teaming up with the Redmond giant would surely lead to a world class contextual advertising system to rival Adsense. International publishers have been at the mercy of Google’s Adsense as the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) and MS Adcentre is still in US beta.

[Update] Forbes also has the story, good read.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs received an $1 salary last year, according to documents filed by the electronics manufacturer on Monday.
Although, don’t be fooled despite the fact that Steve is a dollar billionaire he still owns more than 5,4-million in restricted shares, worth about $496-million (R3,5-billion) on Monday at the close of trading.

Shares of Apple have soared in the past year on the back of stronger computer sales and revenue from its iPod portable music player sales. Apple’s market capitalization has grown to more than $78-billion, and industry analysts expect Apple’s fortunes will only swell with the iPhone, a smart phone-iPod combination scheduled to go on sale in June.

Read more about this story here, here and here.

Popularity: 36% [?]

About 10 hours ago Google announced that they have agreed to acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash (nearly double the size of their YouTube Acquisition which was in stock).

This is bad news for Microsoft has they now fall even further back in the online advertising race. DoubleClick’s $300 million turnover a year will help Google further cement their place as contextual advertising leaders.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 28% [?]

Fortune Magazine recently named Google the #1 company to work for, a ranking based largely on Google’s well-publicized employee perks: free meals in its gourmet cafeteria; on-site doctors, dry cleaners, and gym facilities; and even a policy that allows employees to bring their pets to work. But the benefits of “Googlers” don’t end there. The following list of lesser-heralded employee perks should provide an idea of just how far Google goes to keep the human pistons of its search engine pumping contentedly.

1. Google provides free custom detailing on all employee-owned Segways, motorized scooters, recumbent bicycles, and other widely-derided modes of transportation.

2. For recent computer science grads accepting an engineering position with Google, a popular social event is Google’s “New Employee Orientation and Arranged Virginity-Loss Night.”

3. Google employees who are about to become mothers receive 12 weeks of maternity leave; aging female engineers now coming to terms with the fact they will likely never be mothers receive two weeks of “Crushing Sense of Incompleteness Leave.” (It is 50% paid.)

4. Googlers enjoy an Employee Referral Program – meaning, they receive a cash bonus if they refer management to any employee even thinking about leaving Google.

More after the jump

Popularity: 12% [?]

Here’s a highly detailed look into the upcoming release of the next version of Adobe Photoshop. Good information and good screenshots.

The people on the product team for Photoshop haven’t been getting much sleep. We can only imagine how much Red Bull and coffee they consumed in the process of taking Photoshop CS2 to CS3, which Adobe released as a downloadable public beta back in December. The biggest cause for celebration - at least for creatives who bought new Macs in the last year or so - is that Photoshop CS3 runs natively on Intel-based Macs. And, of course, it won’t come as a surprise to anyone if, once Photoshop CS3 ships, Apple sees a spike in sales of Mac Pros and MacBook Pros.

More after the jump

Popularity: 10% [?]

Google Maps has no problem finding its own headquarter Googleplex, but having serious trouble locating rival Yahoo’s address.

Turns out that Google Maps is having trouble with spelled-out number (first, second, fourth), that is, instead of “701 First Avenue”, “701 1st Avenue” will work when finding Yahoo! on Google Maps.

[via (surprisingly) ValleyWag]

Popularity: 8% [?]

Cisco and Apple today announced that they have resolved their dispute involving the “iPhone” trademark.

Hostilities broke out between the two companies last month, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the music phone at the annual Macworld convention in San Francisco. Cisco claimed that it had owned the trademark since 2000 and was using it for a line of Internet-connected phones.

Under the agreement, both companies are free to use the “iPhone” trademark on their products throughout the world.

In a joint statement, both companies said they are free to use the “iPhone” trademark on their products throughout the world, and each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark. In addition, Cisco and Apple will explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Google is staffing up its new Manhattan offices with some 500 employees. Why is the Internet giant making the Big Apple its second home? Proximity to Madison Avenue and the media giants is only part of the answer. New York City is emerging or re-emerging as a hot tech center. Read more

Popularity: 7% [?]