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Microsoft and Sun might not be a perfect fit for each other, as Joe Wilcox and my colleague Erik Sherman wrote in response to my argument that Microsoft should yank Sun out from under IBM's feet. But I'm not arguing that Sun would be a perfect fit for Microsoft. In fact, I'd go so far as to say t...
Google faces challenges to Google Books class action settlement, a $20 million payment to get rid of the AdWords budget cap suit, and the reinstatement of a trademark suit; Ritz Camera to close 40 percent of all its stores; Smart Technologies sues NextWindow; Swedish antipiracy law scares off a third of its international Internet traffic; European Patent Office revokes a key patent used by Oerikon, at the behest of Applied Materials; Silicon Graphics files for bankruptcy; and SeeqPod also files for bankruptcy.
My colleague Michael Hickins has made the argument that Microsoft should acquire Sun Microsystems now that talks have apparently broken down between Sun and IBM. I've got to disagree. Even though Microsoft could clearly afford the price tag, it would be a foolish choice for almost more strategic rea...
Microsoft has a perfect opportunity to swoop in and snag Sun, accomplishing several goals at once. While most reports have noted that the collapse of the merger talks between Sun and IBM represents an opportunity for HP, Cisco or some other infrastructure vendor to step into the breach and acquire S...
IBM's bid for Sun was always an iffy proposition given the magnitude of the deal. Big deals are by nature difficult to structure, which also explains why so many of them rarely work out as expected, even when they are consummated. Peter Fader, a professor at the Wharton School of Business noted t...
According to The Wall Street Journal, acquisition talks between IBM and Sun Microsystems are "on the brink of collapse" today for a number of reasons, including too low a price and too much ability for IBM to back out of the deal. Perhaps it's a negotiation tactic. But chances are more likely that we're seeing another example of tech acquisition ego, where management and directors of a former high flier know that they are worth so much more -- and management and directors of a long-time high flier assume that hardball always works.
Salesforce.com and NetSuite are the unlikeliest of enemies. Just a few years ago, the companies were at the advance guard of software-as-a-service, a burgeoning new industry that promised to eliminate the high licensing fees and onerous maintenance costs associated with buying on-premise softwa...
New technologies and business models -- whether cloud computing or Intel's Nahalem, which seems positioned to become the first broadly popular 64-bit system -- can have enormous impact on the software industry. We spoke with Judith Hurwitz, CEO of Hurwitz & Associates and noted software market expert.
Helping someone out of a desperate strait is considered an act of human kindness. But when the other party won't climb out of a death trap and has the key to your safe, a rescue is protecting your self-interest. That's exactly the position that Web-based companies face with old line media producers. They ultimately need the content for the Internet ecosystem, but media executives seem determined to take their companies down, with the latest evidence being another dubious attempt to prove the "superiority" of traditional advertising channels.
It has become axiomatic that the difference between consumer and business technology is blurring, and nowhere is this more evident than in the area of handheld devices. This confluence of consumer and business markets has also accelerated dramatically; it took dog years in Internet time for insta...
The other day, Microsoft apparently wanted to make clear that an iPhone version of Office might be in the works, a logical off-shoot of Web-based versions. That might seem an attempt to stave off concern that smartphone operating systems could siphon away important revenue sources from the giant. Bu...
Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and other large wireless carriers and cable companies are behind lobbying efforts in state legislatures around the country to prohibit local governments from using federal stimulus money to build and manage their own broadband networks, critics contend. So far, they seem t...
Just a week ago we saw the layoff numbers reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas that showed a big jump in high tech for January and February. Now that we have complete data for the first quarter, there is some good news: the rate of layoffs is slowing. But the number of jobs lost still eclipses last year, and new high tech job creation isn't coming close to catching up.
Cisco, known primarily as a networking equipment vendor, is hoping to establish an early beachhead in "unified communications," a market it believes will grow to $34 billion, with a flurry of new products for desktops, conference rooms and data centers it introduced today at the VoiceCon conference....
IBM's Open Cloud Manifesto, an attempt to create technical standards for Web-based computer services, has been received with a great deal of suspicion in some circles, and with good reason. While IBM is trying to project itself as the grown-up in the discussion, many observers see the manifesto as o...
