Deals

Google has inked a deal to acquire 6-year-old Ireland-based firm Pointy for $163 million. Pointy provides a $900 box with built-in cellular connectivity, which lets brick-and-mortar retailers list their stock online. It plugs into the retailer's barcode scanner and automatically obtains accurate pro...

Amazon, Apple, Google and the Zigbee Alliance are teaming up on a new IP-based standard for smart home device connectivity. Connected Home over IP will be an open source project. A working group will define a specific set of networking technologies to enable communication across smart home devices, ...

With Dreamforce approaching, it's no surprise that Salesforce is making a flurry of announcements. What is surprising are two big ones involving partnering with other vendors, mostly on infrastructure -- announcements that I believe make the idea of an information utility more real with each passing...

Google plans to launch checking accounts next year. "We're exploring how we can partner with banks and credit unions in the United States to offer smart checking accounts through Google Pay, helping their customers benefit from useful insights and budgeting tools," a spokesperson said. "Our lead par...

Oracle came late to cloud computing, joining the fray only after competitors like Microsoft and Salesforce had established dominant positions, and newcomer Amazon Web Services leaped from a standing start to a position of dominance. Amazon is so strong in the cloud that it is on the cusp of extingui...

Dish Network and Fox Corporation were able to come to terms last weekend, ending the blackout of Fox owned-and-operated local stations, as well as FS1, FS2, BTN, Fox Soccer Plus and Fox Deportes. The blackout of those channels, which began late last month, was notable for its timing. The fall colleg...

The Trump administration has begun inserting legal protections into trade agreements to shield online platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube from lawsuits. That move could help lock in America's tech-friendly regulations around the world even as they are being questioned at home. The legal pro...

Salesforce continues to grow, albeit a little slower than in prior quarters. At least that's my reading of a $4.0 billion quarter that's 22 percent better than the same quarter a year ago. I am used to seeing growth percentages in the high 20s but I am not concerned about a slowdown. I don't know if...

The T-Mobile-Sprint merger looked like it was pretty much a done deal a couple of weeks ago, when DoJ gave its approval. It now looks like there won't be a final answer until 2020. This will go down in history as one of the longest corporate merger attempts. The delay will be hardest on Sprint and D...

What's the big deal, I thought? Last week Salesforce announced it was paying in the range of $1.35 billion for ClickSoftware, a private field service automation and workforce management company. At first, I attributed it to a slow summer news cycle when many people in the industry are off trout fish...

Google Cloud and VMware have announced Google Cloud VMware Solution by CloudSimple, a service that lets organizations run VMware workloads in Google Cloud Platform on premises, in a hybrid architecture, or in the cloud. "Hybrid clouds are key, with only 17-19 percent of workloads in the cloud," note...

It was bound to happen. Salesforce was going to China at some point, and it announced that action this week saying it was partnering with Alibaba. There are so many ways to read this, but I don't have the filters to resist comparing the announcement to what Robin Williams once said about cocaine: "C...

The FTC announced that Equifax has agreed to pay a minimum of $575 million as part of a global settlement of claims against it arising from a 2017 data breach that affected 147 million Americans. The settlement with the FTC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and 50 states and territories pot...

The T-Mobile-Sprint merger has been dragging on for quite a long time, but it finally may be in the home stretch. To get the deal approved, Sprint and T-Mobile might have to sell off some of their wireless assets, and many were surprised by Dish Network's interest. What would this mean for the merge...