by Jason Wilk on October 1, 2009
- On July 7th, Fred Lalonde, the founder of openplaces.org announced in a tweet that Apple had bought the company that produced the Maps API that his company used in their software [CW]. Pushpin is the name of the software API that Openplaces uses and it is made by a company called Placebase. How did everyone find out? Simply a Tweet from the former founder which said “Apple bought PlaceBase – all hush hush. Pushpin site taken offline. Hyperlocal iPhone?”
- How do we know it’s true. For starters, the former CTO of Placebase is now an engineer at Apple as well and the site has been pulled offline. Here is what Om said about the company last year:
Waldman thought differently. He decided to compete with Google and other free mapping services by doing two things: One, by offering customizations and tons of features that integrated private and public data sets in many diverse ways. (He knew it would be a while before Google would get around to offering customization). His other twist was to offer a way to layer commercial and other data sets (such as demographics and crime data) onto the maps using an easy-to-use application programming interface (API). The product is called PushPin.
- Here’s a video of Placebase CEO Jaron Waldman demoing his product at an O’Reilly conference last year. A good example of the software in use is http://policymap.org. Like Openplaces, Policy Map uses the Pushpin API that Apple purchased as the underlying technology in its mapping product.
![[Post to Twitter]](http://tinycomb.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter-big4.png)
by Jason Wilk on September 28, 2009
- Xerox said today it will buy Affiliated Computer Services in a cash and stock deal valued at $6.4 billion. With ACS, the copy king will now expand into services such as collecting tolls and installing computer systems in government agencies [VB]. The purchase price is $63.11 a share, a big premium on ACS’ Friday closing price of $47.50 a share.
- Xerox will now go to head to head against Dell and HP in print managed services, something that HP expanded into with its $13 billion acquisition of EDS last year and Dell’s acquisition of Perot Systems for $3.9 billion just last week. This deal will see Xerox become a $22 billion in revenue a year company.
- ACS, founded more than 20 years ago, has 74,000 employees, while Xerox has 54,000. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2010, pending approvals. The ACS division of Xerox will be led by Lynn Blodgett, its current chief executive.
by Jason Wilk on August 10, 2009
- Facebook has acquired FriendFeed! No details yet on the acquisition price, but we are guessing somewhere in the $50M range. It’s not quite what Facebook wanted (they original tried to nab Twitter last month for a reported $500M only to be turned down). FriendFeed had been showing steady growth over the last year up until Twitter ‘really took off’ in the past quarter, continuing to grow at an impressive 20% a month.
- It’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few of features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates. Facebook has already built out some of FriendFeed’s functionality so there is some overlap, but there are still numerous ways FriendFeed beats out Facebook’s News Feed setup. FriendFeed works a little bit more like a forum, where people can comment on status updates (can’t do this on Twitter), and new activity pushes items back to the top (can’t do this on FB or Twitter).
- Facebook really scored by retaining the founding team which consists of an all-star cast of ex-Googlers such as Paul Buchheit, who is responsible for creating Gmail, pioneering some of Google’s early (and incredibly lucrative) advertising products, and coining Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto.
by Jason Wilk on July 23, 2009
Amazon today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Zappos.com, a leader in online apparel and footwear sales (and Twitter customer service). “Zappos is a customer focused company,” said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “We see great opportunities for both companies to learn from each other and create even better experiences for our customers.”
- Under the terms of the agreement, Amazon will acquire all of the outstanding shares and assume all outstanding options and warrants of Zappos in exchange for approximately 10 million shares of Amazon common stock, equal to approximately $807 million based on the average closing price for the 45 trading days ending July 17, 2009. In addition, Amazon will provide Zappos employees with $40 million in cash and restricted stock units. The acquisition is expected to close during the Fall of 2009.
- Following the acquisition, the Zappos management team will remain intact and Zappos will operate its successful brand, customer experience and unique culture of service independently with headquarters in Las Vegas, NV. “We are joining forces with Amazon because there is a huge opportunity to utilize each other’s strengths and move even faster towards our vision of delivering happiness to customers, employees and vendors,” said Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. “We will continue to build the Zappos brand and culture in our own unique way, and we believe Amazon is the best partner to help us do this over the long term.”
Update: The selling price was $920M. Also, sources close to Zappos said that the company was forced to liquidate by Sequoia Capital (their major investor). Zappos had plenty of cash to hold out until the IPO market recovered, pulling in over $1B in gross revenue in 2008, $625M in net revenue and had an EBITA greater than $40M. Times must be tough for the Sand Hill legend. (PE Hub)
by Jason Wilk on July 13, 2009
- Netflix stock surged today on news that it may be acquired by Amazon. The stock is currently up over 5% in trading today, at an 11-week high. Both Amazon and Netflix are in the midst of a full-on push to get digital video content into the living room. Amazon via its On Demand service, and Netflix through its streaming service(TC). The two are battling the likes of Apple (with the Apple TV) and to some extent Microsoft (though Netflix also works on the Xbox 360 — and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is actually on Microsoft’s board).
- NetFlix may have struck gold with their $1 million challenge to developers who could come up with a reccomendation algorithm that beats theirs by 10%. The contest has been running since 2006, and supposedly there is a winner. Amazon is the king of consumer reccomendations, and this offering from NetFlix paired with their movie rental market share, could make a killer addition to the Jeff Bezoz empire. NetFlix’ (NFLX) current market share is $2.43B.
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