Deals

The parent company of T-Mobile, the fourth-largest U.S. wireless company, is considering a bid for Sprint Nextel, the carrier just north of it on the size chart, according to a British newspaper. Deutsche Telekom could make the offer within the next few weeks, it said. Such a deal, if it were to ha...

The European Commission on Thursday expanded its investigation into Oracle's plans to purchase Sun Microsystems. The EC wants to study the potential antitrust issues arising from proprietary database vendor Oracle's takeover of Sun's open source MySQL database application. It will issue its ruling o...

Online auction site eBay has finally managed to divest itself of Skype, the VoIP company it bought back in 2005 for $2.6 billion. A group of venture capitalists led by Silver Lake Partners has purchased 65 percent of Skype for $2.1 billion in cash and a note, eBay announced on Tuesday. The transacti...

VMworld, VMware's signature annual user and partner event, is kicking off this week in San Francisco, so it seems worth reconsidering the company's recent acquisition of SpringSource. Along with critical human assets, the deal brings a host of tested technologies to VMware, including the Spring Fram...

If LinkedIn is for professionals and Facebook is for friends, then MySpace is still the social network destination for teens/young adults to sing the praises of the rock bands that they love. To that end, MySpace announced Wednesday that it would build on that relationship by acquiring Seattle-based...

A Toronto company aptly named "i4i" is getting its revenge on Microsoft by kicking it square in the monkeymaker. i4i has sued Redmond, claiming that Microsoft Word infringes on its patents. Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas -- where else? -- has given Microsoft two mon...

Nokia and Microsoft on Wednesday announced they are teaming up to create and offer mobile enterprise applications in a bid to tap the fast-growing mobile apps market. Apps could constitute the next gold rush for the mobile industry, and carriers and smartphone vendors are both battling for a share o...

VMware is acquiring SpringSource, an enterprise and Web application development and management company, to eventually build out a Platform as a Service offering. Under the terms of the agreement, VMware will pay approximately $362 million in cash and equity, and it will assume approximately $58 mill...

Google will be acquiring video compression technology provider On2 Technologies in a stock deal valued at $106.5 million. The deal, which requires On2 shareholder and regulatory approval, is expected to close in Q4. Speculation over Google's plans for the On2 technology is rampant. If nothing else, ...

More details about the Yahoo-Microsoft Internet search agreement have been revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Some of the details come as little surprise -- namely, that Microsoft will be hiring Yahoo employees, specifically 400, as part of the proposed partnership. The regulat...

Last week, IBM announced the new Smart Analytics System, a fine-tuned solution for analyzing both structured information in databases and unstructured, often incompatible data from sources such as blogs, emails, information archives, podcasts, videos, Web sites and wikis. The Smart Analytics System ...

Now that Microsoft and Yahoo have finally come to terms on how they will work together to gain turf in the search advertising market, they must convince antitrust regulatory authorities both in the U.S. and in Europe that their union will create more competition -- not less. That will be no easy tas...

Microsoft and Yahoo have inked an Internet search advertising agreement, finally entering a partnership that seemed to die more than one death over the past two years. In broad terms, the deal gives Microsoft access to Yahoo's content and advertisers, with its AdCenter platform serving as the inte...

It's easy to get lost in the cacophony of marketing and media hype surrounding Palm Pres, iPhones, app stores and the mobile Web. However, the low-cost, no-hassle prepaid phone market made some noise of its own Tuesday when Sprint announced it was buying Virgin Mobile USA for $483 million. The move ...

Amazon is making its biggest acquisition yet, having inked an agreement to acquire online shoe retailer Zappos for close to $900 million in stock and cash. Under the terms of the agreement, Amazon will acquire Zappos shares in exchange for approximately 10 million shares of Amazon common stock, valu...