Week in review: Icahn, Microsoft merger maven?
Yahoo faces a proxy battle, while Facebook snubs Google's Friend Connect. Also: New Web surf for streets and stars. (Posted in News Blog by Steven Musil)
The notorious shareholder activist Carl Icahn formally announced that he is
Icahn, who stated that he has acquired roughly 59 million shares of Yahoo, has also sought antitrust clearance from the Federal Trade Commission to acquire up to another $2.5 billion in Yahoo shares.
Icahn is
Icahn has been making his mark in the tech industry of late, most notably in the last year or so, with his actions regarding Motorola and BEA Systems. Over the past 13 years, he's logged more wins than losses in his proxy fights, according to FactSet SharkWatch.
Microsoft earlier this month walked away from its multibillion-dollar bid to buy Yahoo when the two companies failed to come to agreement over the purchase price.
Some CNET News.com readers were suspicious of Icahn's motives.
"Icahn specializes in what's best for him," one reader wrote in the TalkBack forum. "Is he in this for the long haul? Or just the short-term profit?"
On the other side of the merger manners meter, Hewlett-Packard proved that friendly blockbuster deals could still be done today.
HP plans to
But the sheer size of the deal is more than a bit daunting. The deal represents the combination of the largest number of people that the IT services sector has seen, Gartner analyst Ben Pring said, and HP faces serious challenges when it comes to integrating two vastly different companies. The track record of deals like this is "pretty spotty," Pring said, and IBM's purchase of PricewaterhouseCoopers demonstrated that the transition can be tough.
In other merger news,
Google wants to make friends
Google has unveiled a preview of Friend Connect, a way to
It's a big move for Facebook. Until this point, the social network has had a reputation for keeping its cards close to its chest--even banning the account of popular blogger Robert Scoble when he used a script to export his Facebook contact list to Plaxo. But Facebook has a representative in the Data Portability Workgroup, and executives have said Facebook has wanted to bring its information outside the site eventually.
Google Friend Connect, on the other hand, employs
It's yet another option in the complicated and fast-changing set of alliances and standards efforts in the social-networking domain. When Friend Connect was first announced, Google engineers explained that it would take advantage of other social-networking sites' APIs to enrich the program--including Facebook's.
However, a post on Facebook's developer blog explains that the
Meanwhile, Comcast is
Web surf's up on street, stars
Google is
"The imaging technology includes lasers that collect 3D geometry data," the company said in a statement. However, for now, at least, the 3D information is just experimental, Google said.
Savvy observers, looking at Flickr pictures of Google Street View cars gathering images in Milan, had identified the 3D laser scanners in April. At the time, Google didn't comment, but it now has confirmed the scanners, as well as the expansion of Google Street View to Europe.
Search results can be refined by specifying price range or number of bedrooms and bathrooms. In addition, there's a text mode that will be more familiar to the classified-ad crowd. (Huh? Text mode for a mapping site? There's still a small map visible.)
But soon you will be seeing less from Google's Street View; the company has begun
He likened the issues some have with Street View to the ones that took place when Google introduced aerial views to Google Maps. It took time for the public, regulators, and Google to get comfortable with the feature, but "it needs that debate. We see that and try to let it play out."
Meanwhile,
Microsoft said WorldWide Telescope will be made available for free as a tribute to Jim Gray, a Microsoft researcher who disappeared off the California coast while sailing last year.
Also of note
The One Laptop Per Child project and Microsoft announced that the