Microsoft makes an offer of $44.6 billion to acquire Yahoo!

According to some serious sources from techdirt.com, this is the third time that a rumor like that is spread over the net-economy.

It was the same during the first half of 2006, and 2007 and today, Microsoft comes back with this huge offer of $44.6 billion, i.e $31 per share!

This offer might have been rejected by the past, but today things are a little bit different, Yahoo's share is being treated arround $31/share during last year and its paid search activity is not really doing well.

Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft seemed to be conifdent about his company's chances this time during a conference call where he explained this new bid. Moreover, he even assured that Google cannot bit Microsoft on this deal simply because Google is controlling now about 75% of the paid search activity and by the antitrust laws, they cannot acquire Yahoo.


Eric Schonlfeld from techcrunch.com, has tried to make a comparaison between Microsoft, Yahoo and Google in the following table:

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Yahoo is to reduce its workforce by 20%

Yahoo has announced that a decision to reduce it sworkforce by 20% was taken. In fact talks about this workforce reduction, have been doing the rounds since the Yahoo former CEO Terry Semel leaving in June 2007.

Yahoo's workforce counts 12,000 and this purge will really be a big strike. According to comScore, the traffic towards different Yahoo applicatons and products is still ahead of Google. But it is not as profitable as Google's.

The Sunnyvale company is actually trying through this move to giv ea strong push to its stock that has poorly performed during the last year and to stay ahead.

Facebook has finally joined the DataPortability Workgroup

Duncan Riley, one of the Techcrunch writer has just announced that Facebook has really joined Google and Plaxo to the DataPortability Workgroup. A surprising news since Facebook previous choice was to stay within a very closed standards.

"The DataPortability Workgroup is actively working to create the ‘DataPortability Reference Design’ to document the best practices for integrating existing open standards and protocols for maximum interoperability (and here’s the key area) to allow users to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems."

More to come about this new "volte face".

Amazon launches Kindle on Monday

It is offcial Amazon has launched a new eReader called Kindle. Most viewers find it ugly but I find it really well designed somehow!

It is, in fact, retro designed but seems to me like a tool coming directly from the spacecraft "Galactica":)

In addition to its killer design and holds inside some impressive features that will make shy Sony Reader's developers for a while.

Whiel this latest needs to synchronize its content with a computer, the Kindle can have access to cellular networks and even wireless internet (not sure!)

The only two things that can be taken as negative about this product is that primarly, it costs about $400, which means $100 more Sony Reader and secondly, it doesn't use an open standard ebooks reader format. It uses Amazon's proprietary format called Mobipocket.

Is skype to be acquired by Google?

It is only a rumour, you said? Well, this is not what Jemima Kiss seems to say.
According to her, Google is holding talks with eBay the current Skype owner in order to bring this 10 million users wireless operator to its stabe.

All observers agree on the fact that this makes a sense for both Google and eBay. For Google this will strongthen its new open mobile development platform Android. Google which isn't actually hiding any more its ambition to have more presence in the wireless field and Skype acquisition is a good move in that direction. On the other hand, eBay is yet struggling to make Skype a profitable project and shareholders are getting impatient about that .

This rumour becomes more significant when we know that Google has moved its mobile activity to London!

23andMe:Google wants to control human's genome too!

It seems that after controling a diverse set of people's data; both private and professional, that Google is aiming now to control their own DNA "data". Do you want to know why am I saying this?

Well, it is, in fact, Sergey Brin’s wife Anne Wojcicki who is behind this new announcement (Sergey Brin is one of the Google founders, for those who still have doubts:-)). And your conviction will be complete when you know that Google's put about $4 million in this startup.

According to Techcrunch, "23andMe will offer a genetic screening service for $999. The short story is that 23andMe will administer a test (presumably a swab or saliva test) that will take your DNA and screen it. In return you will be told your genetic history including whether you are likely to suffer from a range of diseases or similar life altering events, including heart disease."

Isn't this quite intriguing? Isn't this another manifestation of Google's obsession to control people's life?