Deals

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," as the old saying goes, and this week Oracle took steps to do just that. Specifically, the database giant inked partnership deals with longtime competitors Microsoft and Salesforce.com in a bid to expand its reach in cloud computing. Announced on Mo...

Microsoft and Nokia were recently in advanced negotiations about a possible purchase deal, but the negotiations ultimately broke down on the topic of price, according to reports. Little is known about the talks; anonymous sources say they happened as recently as this month and focused on Nokia's dev...

Google has settled the class-action shareholder lawsuit that had been blocking a stock split it originally announced last year, the company said Monday, paving the way for it to move forward with the split as planned. The suit's settlement was an eleventh-hour development in this 14-month storyline,...

Video streaming service Netflix on Monday announced a new, multiyear partnership with DreamWorks Animation whereby it will bring many of the studio's beloved characters to the TV market via a branded collection of shows. Marking the largest deal for original first-run content in Netflix's history, t...

Former Palm CEO and webOS creator Jon Rubinstein is apparently still brooding over Palm's acquisition by HP. Two years later, he looks back at what HP did with webOS -- or rather what it didn't do -- and he is very disappointed, he said in a recent interview. When HP acquired Palm for $1.2 billion i...

Google has finalized its acquisition of Waze, developer of a crowdsourced mapping app, with the goal of expanding its location-based and social maps offerings while providing users with a way to outsmart traffic. Israel-based Waze has a worldwide user base of about 50 million people who log in to ac...

Softbank and Sprint issued a statement late Monday announcing changes to the merger agreement awaiting shareholders' approval. The new deal increases the amount of cash that would go to stockholders by reallocating funds that had been earmarked for direct investment in Sprint. SoftBank will acquire ...

DirecTV and two other unidentified bidders reportedly are offering upwards of $1 billion to buy Hulu. DirecTV could be planning to add Hulu's digital offerings to its TV packages. Hulu offers both free and paid content, with about 4 million subscribers to its premium Hulu Plus service. Together, ads...

Michael Dell's attempt to take his company private in a $24.4 billion deal has moved forward another inch or so in what is turning out to be a very long road for the CEO. Dell notified its shareholders on Friday that the special committee formed in February, after Michael Dell first unveiled his buy...

Yahoo hasn't been playing around when it comes to acquisitions. Its latest, announced Tuesday, is PlayerScale, which makes software infrastructure for cross-platform gaming. Four-year-old PlayerScale has built a sizable audience, and it could fit well with Yahoo's new direction. "This deal is intrig...

Two well-known restaurant delivery services -- GrubHub and Seamless -- announced plans to merge on Monday. The services enable users to search local restaurants that deliver by ZIP code and food specialty. Combined, the companies' footprint will cover 500 cities and connect users to more than 20,000...

Dish Network is offering $2 billion for some of LightSquared's spectrum in a move that could help the company expand its offerings beyond pay TV. The offer would add spectrum to Dish's growing supply of airwaves. LightSquared, the bankrupt wireless network company funded largely by billionaire Phili...

Yahoo is reportedly looking to purchase microblogging platform and social networking website Tumblr for $1 billion. Tumblr is considered one of the coolest companies on the Internet because of its appeal to younger users -- the very demographic that Yahoo, which recently characterized its users as ...

Barnes & Noble investors reacted with pure unadulterated joy to the possibility that Microsoft is considering entering the e-book market and will acquire the company's Nook unit for a whopping $1 billion. Shares rose by a dizzying 24 percent on Thursday, when the rumor surfaced. By the close of ...

Barnes & Noble investors reacted with pure unadulterated joy to the possibility that Microsoft is considering entering the e-book market and will acquire the company's Nook unit for a whopping $1 billion. Shares rose by a dizzying 24 percent on Thursday, when the rumor surfaced. By the close of ...