• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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)

• 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.

• It’s been a while since we have heard anything from Dell about their supposed entrance into the smartphone market. This past March, Michael Dell said “It is true that we are exploring smaller-screen devices. We don’t have any announcements to share today, but stay tuned as when we have new news we will share that with you.” But will Dell actually waste their time trying to produce the phone or will they buy their way into the market? Dell has had few chances to prove themselves in the consumer electronics world. Most notably, the launch of their Dell DJ in 2003, which failed miserably. It was slow, had terrible packaging and tried to ride the coattails of the iPod.  Let’s face it, with the Palm Pre and iPhone now in full force, Dell trying to introduce something innovative will end up being just as big a flop if not more embarrassing than the Mp3 player (I imagine it would look like the image above). What makes the most sense? A Palm acquisition. The Dallas Morning News writes:

“expectations are growing that Dell is about to make a major splash with a corporate acquisition. While the smart money seems to be on Dell wanting to “expand its data-storage and tech-services businesses,” that’s pretty boring. At the other end of the spectrum, there’s been some thought for awhile that Dell should look at buying Palm. Dell has reportedly been tinkering with releasing a new line of smart phones, but the company’s original concepts were apparently so lame that the carriers all told Dell to take a hike.

• Dell failing in the smartphone market certainly would not be an issue if they were to suddenly take possession of the Pre and webOS. They have $10B in cash, a bank account healthy enough to buy Palm at their current market cap of 1.85B. The acquisition would make sense for Palm and its major investor, Elevation Partners who invested an additional $100M in Palm at $3.25 per share in 2008. Riding the hype of the Palm Pre as well as post launch, Elevation Partners have already quadrupled their investment, and would certainly be willing to consider an offer if the stock were to sell at a premium price point (Palm now sits at $13. 43 per share). Palm stock will only conitnue to go up as everyone looks to Palm Pre being picked up by Verizon Wireless and their 80M subscribers.

• Once touted as the company taking on Amazon’s Kindle by developing an eReader app for the iPhone (Stanza), Lexcycle has now been acquired by well, Amazon. Stanza allows users to browse a library of around 100,000 books and periodicals for the iPhone, many of them in the ePub format — a widely accepted standard for e-books that Amazon has yet to support with its proprietary Kindle platform (Bits, NyTimes)

Lexcycle said, “We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition. Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read e-books from our many content partners.”

The Lexcycle team will join Amazon and help them lay the ground work for owning more platforms such as Android, Palm Pre and Windows Mobile devices. Amazon said Lexcycle is a smart, innovative company, and is looking forward to working with them.

Looking For A Job Or Need To Hire? Join The Thousands On TinyComb’s Job Board

• Jefferies analyst Youssef Squali ran some of the numbers on Yahoo’s (YHOO) potential search/display ad deal with Microsoft (MSFT) in a report today. His notes from SAI. Keep in mind this is based on a partnership, not an all-out asset swap.

• Outsourcing search infrastructure to Microsoft could save Yahoo $1 billion to $1.3 billion per year.
• A 50/50 revenue share to sell display ads on Microsoft’s sites could bring in $600 million to $800 million in incremental annual revenue for Yahoo. (Assuming the display ad business doesn’t fall off a cliff.)
• So, combined savings/revenue could be $1.6 billion to $2.1 billion per year. (Not bad for a company with $5 billion in annual sales.)

More Microsoft/Yahoo Must-Reads:

Microsoft COO: Vista and Windows 7 Safer Than Mac

First Microsoft Yahoo Talks Of 2009 Begin

Windows 7 Getting Good Feedback

• Cisco Systems Inc, the company which should be buying Sun Micrososytems, has announced it will be buying buying Flip digital camcorder-maker, Pure Digital Technologies
• Cisco, the world’s largest maker of computer networking equipment said today it would pay $590 million in stock to purchase all of privately held Pure Digital’s shares.
• Cisco is attracted to Pure Digital’s pocket-sized Flip camcorder, which has sold more than 2 million units in the US, will help Cisco with their plans to diversify into the consumer market.

“This acquisition will take Cisco’s consumer business to the next level as the company … drives the next generation of entertainment and communication experiences,” Ned Hooper, senior vice president of Cisco’s corporate development and consumer groups, said in the statement.

• Cisco has $29 billion in cash to make the purchase, which is only a small piece of their plans to expand into other markets. What’s great about this potential acquisition is it gets Silicon Valley VC’s one of their first exits of the year. Pure Digital, based in San Francisco, is backed by venture capital investors including Sequoia Capital and Benchmark Capital. Of course.

• Amazon.com, which fared the best out of all online shopping destinations this holiday season, has stopped supporting BillMeLater, eBay’s latest questionable acquisition which ran a bill of nearly $1 billion. It was widely speculated that Amazon would drop the ‘buy now, pay later’ service considering their move in the past to cut Paypal after eBay acquired it. Amazon now has their own payment system in place.
• Before eBay’s purchase of BillMeLater, Amazon had retained a 10% stake in the company. They had never held a board seat, thus their ties to it were limited beyond equity and good faith to use of the service.
• On Tuesday, Friedman Billings Ramsey said Amazon let merchant partners know about the change, which went into effect Wednesday. BillMeLater’s top customers without Amazon, still include OfficeMax, Apple, Newegg, and QVC.
• BillMeLater still has strong promise however without the giant retailer. Last year they had $31.6 billion in addressable sales, compared to $26.1 billion for PayPal. eBay couldn’t ignore those numbers as many speculated that BillMeLater could eventually surpass PayPal as the dominant payment processor on the web due to it’s ability to quickly process payments and instantly adjust credit ratings for consumers. Whether or not it succeeds in the long run, eBay could not ignore the acquisition which could have fell into the hands of a viable competitor, threatening one of their most profitable arms.
• We still speculate that eBay is on the fritz, however the company was the top destination traffic wise for the holidays with 85 million visitors compared to Amazon’s 76 million (ComScore).
• Was this a message from Amazon to eBay that competiton is heating up even more between the two giants?

• Nokia just announced their new smart phone handset, the N97.
• Although not as thin as most of it’s competitors, the N97 boasts a 3.5″ tilting touch screen along with a QWERTY keyboard, and 32GB of memory.
• Jonas Geust, the VP heading up the Nokia Nseries line claims that “the Nokia N97 is the most powerful, multi-sensory mobile computer in existence.” …sounds routine.
• Scoble, who got a chance to play around with the phone claims the Facebook experience on the Nokia to be far superior to the iPhone.  Depending on how you feel about Scoble, you can take the statement for truth or with a grain of salt.  I’ll take extra salt.
• In other news today, Nokia announced that they’ve acquired software company, Symbian Limited, who they’ve been working with since back when the S60 was being developed.  This isn’t a huge surprise as they already owned a decent portion of Symbian’s shares…..now they own them all.
• I’m near positive the N97 won’t come close to the iPhone, but will it give the G1 or the Storm a run for it’s money?

Nokia, Mash, CG, Scbl, E, EM

• Six Apart, the blogging platform company, is buying Twitter clone Pownce
• Co-founder Leah Culver and full-time employee Mike Malone will join Six Apart to help with new products. As for the Pownce product, it is supposedly being shut down.
• SixApart either bought Pownce for their technology and intelligent management or they are just going to bring it back to life with a better focus to take down Twitter.
• Most likely they will bring back the Pownce brand, but develop some micro-blogging integrations into SixAparts platform that go hand in hand with what Powence will relaunch as.
• No word on the price. We just know it’s another pay day for Digg founder, Kevin Rose.

SAI

• It turns out we may have been onto something last week when we talked about how Microsoft and their new Kumo.com domain, partnered with Yahoo could be what it takes to start catching up to Google. Read here
• As of today, Microsoft is in talks to acquire Yahoo’s online search business for $20 billion
• Microsoft has no interest in another full takeover bid for the web giant, which it offered $47.5 billion to this summer.
• Microsoft is only interested in Yahoo’s search market share a this point. They are tired of where they are positioned in the search market and Yahoo is the only potential deal of this decade that can potentially change that. Microsoft can’t even bribe users to come search with them over Google.
• It is speculated that Jonathan Miller, chief executive of AOL, and Ross Levinsohn, a former Fox Interactive Media president, have been lined up to lead the new management team.
• There is no certainty that this deal is going to happen, nor is there hard evidence that it even exists. News began circulating this morning with London’s TimesOnline, and has since caught fire in the blogosphere. However, Ross Levinsohn has gone on record claiming there is “no truth” to the story. Therefore, I would not be bettng high on Micrsoft this week over Yahoo acqusition talks. However, this news for Yahoo will only make them a stronger pick for the week than before.

• Yahoo’s Paris-based comparisson shopping application Kelkoo, which they acquired in 2004 for €475 million is supposedly sold.
• A UK-based private equity firm called Jamplant Ltd purchased the site at or around €100 million
• It’s about time Yahoo, now sell off Yahoo Japan and get some money back to your investors.

TechCrunch

• AT&T bought Centennial Wireless today for $944M
• The move will help AT&T improve coverage in the midwest, southeast and Puerto Rico as well as add 1.1M customers to AT&T’s 74.9M base.
• Verizon’s purchase of Alltel last week may have had something to do with this.
• The Death Star gets larger.

CG