VMware will buy Zimbra from Yahoo for an undisclosed sum of cash. The open-source email suite provides email, contacts, calendar, search, document collaboration and authoring and VoIP tools for corporations and businesses, including Digg, H&R Block and Comcast.
Topic: Buy-Outs
Seesmic acquires Ping.fm – moves beyond the Twitter client
The Twitter and Facebook client Seesmic will be adding over 50 social networks – including Ning, Yammer, LinkedIn and Status.net – to its list where it can update your status via its mobile, web and desktop applications after acquiring Ping.fm for an undisclosed sum.
Rotten Tomatoes sold to Flixster
It’s official. Rotten Tomatoes, the popular movie reviews aggregator, has a brand new owner – Flixster, another movie social network. The company acquired the site from IGN, which is owned by News Corporation, in exchange for a minority stake in the company.
Malaysian payment system developer buys Friendster
Remember Friendster? Maybe because they’re the ones that keep spamming you; but today, news broke that Malaysian online payment solutions provider MOL has bought Friendster for an undisclosed amount, but it is rumoured to be around the $100 million mark.
Xerox to buy Affiliated Computer Services for US$6.4 billion
Xerox has announced today it will buy Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) in cash and stock in a deal that is worth US$6.4 billion, allowing the copier giant to expand into the outsourcing and IT services market as its corporate customers spend less.
Dell buys Perot Systems in $3.9 billion deal
Dell has announced that it will buy Perot Systems, an IT services provider, in a deal worth US$3.9 billion as the company is looking to diversify away from its consumer PC business core and to better position itself from rivals like HP.
UK: ITV sells Friends Reunited for £25 million
Television broadcaster ITV plc has sold its social networking website Friends Reunited to Brightsold, a subsidiary of publisher DC Thomson, for £25 million (AU$50.35 million) – a £10 million increase from the £15 million prediction, according to The Guardian.
AT&T to buy Centennial for $944 Million
AT&T has announced that it would buy Centennial Communications for $944 million on Friday (US Eastern Time), giving the company an additional 1.1 million customers to its 74.9 million customers, and will improve the coverage of AT&T in the Midwest, Southeast, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Best Buy buys Napster for $121m
US Electronics retailer Best Buy has said that it will be acquiring Napster, making it Best Buy’s first entree into the online-music sector. The deal will see Best Buy buying Napster shares at $2.65 apiece, with the acquisition being valued at $121 million.
Giga Omni Media buys TheAppleBlog
GigaOm and TheAppleBlog have announced that GigaOm’s parent company Giga Omni Media has purchased the blog. No word on how much did they bought the blog for, but it expected that he Om Malik didn’t pay that much for it.
Report: Google to buy Digg?
TechCrunch is reporting that search giant Google is close to acquiring social news aggregator Digg for around $200 million, with the companies are in "final negotiations" according to their sources.
It would most likely to be under its Google News property, but it could still fall through or another party would step in, like Microsoft – whom they have an advertising deal with and will be terminated if a sale to Google is a likely outcome.
News in Brief: Twitter buys tweet search engine
Twitter has made its first acquisition, buying the search engine Summize. Summize would also see five out of six employees being Twitter employees, the one who is not is its founder Jay Verdy, who has departed the company to work on a "new project".
Guardian Media Group buys paidContent parent company for $30 million
paidContent, a blog about "the economics of content", has said that it will be acquired by UK media company Guardian Media Group, owners of The Guardian and Guardian.co.uk. The Guardian Media Group itself is owned by the Scott Trust.
Nokia buys Symbian
Nokia has announced that it will aquire the remaining 52% of Symbian, the developers of the Series 60 operating system on many of Nokia’s phones. As well, it will also release the entire source code as Open Source, licensing it under the Eclipse Open Source License.
EA extends Take-Two offer deadline
Electronic Arts has said that it would extend their hostile takeover of rival Take-Two by one month. The $2 billion offer expired on May 16 before the deadline.
EA launched an unsolicited bid for the "Grand Theft Auto IV" publisher on 25 February for a $26-per-share, which represents a 50% premium on it’s closing price on 22 February. The extended deadline will see EA’s offer expire on June 16.