WebProNews » Acquisition

Better Homes & Gardens Acquires All Recipes.Com

Shawn Hess — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:50:46 +0000

“The acquisition of Allrecipes.com, the market leader in the digital food space, significantly enhances our leading consumer and advertiser proposition,” says Steve Lacy, Meredith Corporation Chairman and CEO, who just purchased the #1 digital food service, Allrecipes.com.

“It more than doubles the scale of the Meredith Women’s Digital Network, and is expected to drive incremental revenue and profit growth, adding to our already strong free cash flow over time.”, explains Lacy.

The all recipes.com entity was purchased for $175 million. currently the online database consists of over 500,000 recipes.

Chief Development Officer John Zieser explains, “We are constantly looking for strategic acquisitions and investment opportunities to expand our reach and increase shareholder value”.

Recent related purchases that also bolster Meredith Corporation’s value include ‘Every Day with Rachael Ray’ magazine and its associated assets.

The purchase of allreciepe doubles (and then some) the audience of Meredith Women’s Network. The site now hosts over 40 million new monthly visitors.

Like.com Announces Acquisition by Google

Chris Crum — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 14:02:00 +0000

Rumors surfaced recently that Google was buying Like.com. Those rumors have now been confirmed, as Like.com has announced the news on their site. Founder and CEO Munjal Shah writes:

Since 2006, Like.com has been moving the frontiers of eCommerce forward one steap at a time. We were the first to bring visual search to shopping, the first to build an automated cross-matching system for clothing, and more. We didn’t stop there, and don’t have plans to stop now. We see joining Google as a way to supersize our vision and supercharger our passion. This is something we are truly excited about.

Along the way we built a team that was not just hard working but obsessed with the mission at hand. We are so very proud of this team, and they deserve all the credit for how far we have come. In addition, there are many folks outside the company who have been pivotal to our success. All the Like.com alumni are incredible folks who left our little company better than they found it. Our investors were patient, insightful, and supportive of our plans to build a bigger platform. Our merchant partners were cutting edge and innovative, and in many cases they were willing to try new approaches and new technologies to better the user experience.

The company says it has developed technology that lets it understand what terms like "red high-heeled pumps" or "floral patterned sleeveless dress" mean, and has created algorithms to understand whether or not items will complement or clash with one another. The company also operates personalized shopping site Covet.com, user-generated fashion site Weardrobe.com, and Couturious.com, which it says "pushes the envelope on Rich Internet Architectures."

Google is obviously impressed with the technology behind Like.com, and it will be interesting to see what they do with it.

Financial details of the acquisition have not been disclosed. TechCrunch says its heard that the price was over $100 million.

StumbleUpon Becomes Its Own Company Again

Jordan McCollum — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:08:59 +0000

First there were the acquisition rumors, then the acquisition. Then there were the sale rumors. Now, eBay has sold StumbleUpon—to the social discovery app (and its funders) itself.

In May 2007, eBay purchased StumbleUpon at $75 million, to much confusion in the blogosphere. At the time, eBay was taking a “wait and see” approach before integrating any of its holdings with the sharing and discovery toolbar. Just under two years later, with the help of well-known VCs, the service is returning to its roots as an independent start up, including bringing the founders, Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith, back.

Camp, who will take the CEO role, said in the release:

We are grateful to eBay for its guidance. However, we realized there were few long-term synergies between the two businesses. It is best for us to part ways and focus on our respective strengths

*forehead smack*

It took them two years to see that there were “few long-term synergies” between a way to navigate to web pages people like and an online auction service? What were the short-term synergies?

Wait, wait—don’t tell me. There were 75 million short-term synergies, huh?

If I had to bet, I’d say that the price was right at the time for a popular and well-hyped web service. But since then, the value has tumbled with the rest of the economy—and since their then-parent couldn’t figure out what to do with them anyway. Buying themselves out of the eBay stable still probably left StumbleUpon with a net gain.

Meanwhile, eBay continues to struggle with its direction with its VoIP service, Skype, and finding the long-term synergies there. Is the popular telephony service the next to leave eBay’s fold?

What do you think? Is StumbleUpon better off on its own? Why did eBay acquire them in the first place?

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Yahoo Indexes IndexTools For Acquisition

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:12:06 +0000

Web analytics firm IndexTools goes to Yahoo in a purchase that will augment Yahoo’s strategies for promoting its advertising business to clients.

The real world may appreciate who you know more than what you know in many cases, but the converse is true online. Information is power, especially to site publishers who need to know how well their websites and ad campaigns fare.

In the face of Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover bid, Yahoo made the case to investors that its business will grow dramatically through the next two years. Getting there means compelling more advertisers to see Yahoo as a destination commanding their attention and business.

Though the bid for investor buy-in to management’s vision did not receive as favorable a response as Yahoo wanted, Jerry Yang and company continue to build the business. The IndexTools purchase indicates a strategy where Yahoo gains by increasing the volume of their ad business, by appealing to smaller companies.

“We

T-Mobile May Dial Up Sprint Acquisition

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:15:27 +0000

A weakened dollar and a sub-$7 share price combined to drive rumors of T-Mobile possibly buying troubled wireless provider Sprint-Nextel.

The white knight riding to Sprint’s rescue may speak with a distinctly Teutonic accent.

Discussions of such a move made it into the views of Merrill Lynch analysts. They see such a move as possible in order to thwart a brewing price war for services, the Kansas City Star said.

Sprint recently announced a $99 per month price plan for unlimited voice and data services on their network. The price dramatically undercut rivals who have not matched the plan and face the prospect of heavy users fleeing to what could be a much better deal.

One wireless industry observer would prefer not to see a T-Mobile takeover of Sprint. Om Malik thinks everyone should just say no to this idea:

In theory it may seems like a wonderful idea. In reality, if this deal happens, than it is going to be worse than a Las Vegas wedding after a night long binge! The combined company will operate four different kind of networks – iDen, CDMA, WiMAX and GSM. Did these analysts forget that the iDEN-CDMA integration has been one of the major reasons for Sprint-Nextel

World Reacts To Microsoft-Yahoo Surprise

Doug Caverly — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:26:28 +0000

Generally speaking, stories about Yahoo don’t have many exclamation marks – we’ve learned to drop ‘em from the company’s name. Exclamation marks are appearing all over the place, however, following the exciting news of Microsoft’s acquisition offer.

Barry Schwartz tossed out a brief "wow!" at around 7:45 this morning. The kicker, though, is that he did so while on a trip to Israel – while a lot of other things speak to the importance of the development (including the $44.6 billion price tag, of course), so does that. Duncan Riley, meanwhile, began his article on the subject with an all-caps version of the same three-letter word.

Meanwhile, when we move beyond the initial shock, there are some other interesting issues to consider. Larry Dignan asks, "Can Microsoft manage it all? Some key questions to ponder: Would Zimbra become the future Office Live? How about rationalizing products, ad systems and search algorithms. What about ad markets? Cloud computing projects? The overlap is immense."

Of course, if we’re to return to the matter of exclamation marks, there’s also the simple question of what the combined corporations would be called. Thomas Ricker created a poll in which "Microsoft" is the current leader (the reasoning being that the dominant company has no need to acknowledge Yahoo). The runner-up choice is a prediction that the Feds won’t approve an acquisition. But in third place is the relatively believable option of "Microsoft!"

Finally, if you haven’t noticed by now, what’s missing from among all these comments is an official statement from Yahoo. (The "we got an offer and will think about it" bit doesn’t really count.) But should the company say something interesting, you can depend on reading about it here.

News Corp-LinkedIn Acquisition Rumors Myth?

David Berkowitz — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:03:12 +0000

So perhaps the News Corp-LinkedIn acquisition rumors are a myth anyway: Link: TechCrunch UK ? Blog Archive ? Who needs LinkedIn when you have MySpace?.

Apparently, the story goes on to say, News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media (FIM) executives have come up with an elegant solution which means they won’t have to splash out on a billion dollars for LinkedIn:

FIM President Peter Levinsohn told Reuters last week that MySpace plans to let its users create different profiles to attract different contacts, such as personal friends, business contacts or family members.

If this is the case, the biggest problem with MySpace isn’t that it’s old hat or its growth is slowing or it has too many ads. None of that matters if it has no clue who its users are and what they’re doing on the site. I am friends with a number of business contacts on MySpace, but I don’t know of anyone using it for business purposes, and they’re not going to start just because there are a few new profile settings. Though perhaps some of the invite spam that comes along will now say "BubblesHot4U69Tonyte wants to be your business contact on MySpace."

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MSFT Wants 30% of Search, 40% of Web Ads

Jordan McCollum — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:50:31 +0000

Well, if you can’t be #1, then you should probably do like Microsoft and aim for being “one of the top two” (aka #2). Reuters reports that Microsoft is looking to knock one of their competitors (you know, Yahoo and Google) out pretty soon. Microsoft’s President of Platforms and Services Kevin Johnson, speaking at a UBS investor conference, is aiming pretty high in his three- to five-year plan for the company’s web advertising prospects.

Reuters cites Microsoft’s acquisition of aQuantive, announced in May and completed in August, as evidence of how serious they are about online advertising.

Johnson called Microsoft’s plan for web dominance the “10, 20, 30, 40″ plan. If all goes accordingly:

10% of all Internet page views will be MSN.com and Windows Live email

20% of all time online will be spent at Microsoft website

30% of Internet searches will be performed on Microsoft/Live

40% of Internet and digital ad dollars will be paid to Microsoft

Some of these goals are pretty optimistic: while they already have 6% of Internet page views (four percentage points off goal 1), and 17% of time online (three percentage points off goal 2), they only have 10% of Internet searches (twenty percentage points off goal 3) and 6% of digital ad dollars (thirty-four percentage points off goal four).

Johnson’s plan to compete:

“If you look at the landscape of other competitors or other companies in this area, not only do we have the technology, research and development capability to deploy, but (we have) our willingness to invest for the long term,” said Johnson in a question-and-answer session with UBS analyst Heather Bellini. . . .

Johnson said Microsoft has worked to improve the relevance of its Web search results and how it presents that information, but the company has failed to close the gap on Google and Yahoo.

Of course, I don’t really expect much more than buzz words from them, something tells me that Google and Yahoo have a couple of dollars to spend on “technology, [and] research and development” and I think they’re willing “to invest for the long term.” Maybe I’m wrong, though, maybe Google’s plan all along is to get dominate the market, squash the competition and then, after a couple years, fade into obscurity as quickly as possible.

And relevance? Was relevance supposed to be enough to unseat Google and Yahoo?

via

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Government Still Questioning GoogleClick

Jordan McCollum — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 19:10:56 +0000

The FTC has not yet confirmed Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick. Last week’s town meeting on the subject of behavioral targeting hasn’t changed that. So when I came across as story today entitled “Congress Calls For Hearing On GoogleClick Deal,” I thought that something was really starting to happen over there.

But then the article begins, “Republican Congress members Tuesday called for a hearing into whether Google’s proposed $3.1 billion buyout of DoubleClick would compromise Web users’ privacy.”

Oh. So it’s not all 535 voting members of the US Congress that think there’s something hinky with the world’s largest ~~data repository~~ search engine purchasing one of the largest online advertising agencies and platforms.

In fact, it’s not even all 250 Republican members of Congress. It’s twelve of them. They’ve written a letter to Rep. Bobby Rush, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, stating:

Google and DoubleClick would have one of the largest search query databases with one of the largest online user behavioral profile databases. The privacy implications of such a merger are enormous and without an in-depth examination, we and the American public will not fully understand what all of those implications may be.

I’m not one to fight Google’s battle for them (since I’m not entirely convinced that those twelve angry [congress]men aren’t right). Google, however, has been eager to fight for themselves, responding that they’ve:

taken a number of industry-leading steps to improve privacy for our users, and the success of the DoubleClick acquisition depends on our retaining our users’ trust. . . . Congress would be best served by taking an industry-wide look at the issue, just as the FTC did at last week’s town hall.

On the one hand, Google’s right: this just isn’t Congress’s job. It’s like the Dept. of Justice telling the FCC what to do about Net Neutrality (oh wait . . . )—except this time, we’re getting our separated powers all in a knot.

With all the “help” they’re getting, will the FTC (and the FCC!) ever get a chance to finally decide for themselves?

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AOL Pings Quigo For Acquisition

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:23:46 +0000

Quigo and its AdSonar network became the latest in a string of advertising company acquisitions made by AOL in 2007.

One might think that AOL has plenty of contextual ad-matching capabilities with its Google partnership, but that hasn’t stopped them from picking up a smaller firm offering a similar service.

AOL announced it would purchase Quigo for an undisclosed sum. Quigo touts its AdSonar technology that lets advertisers purchase ads on websites based on specific pages, sections, topics or keywords.

The deal also brings AOL a search engine marketing business. Quigo owns FeedPoint, which offers PPC, paid inclusion, and comparison shopping services.

Quigo joins Tacoda, Adtech AG, and Third Screen Media, the latter a mobile advertising company, as 2007 purchase by AOL. Randy Falco, chairman and CEO of AOL, said in a statement that Quigo will help them “put the final pieces of Platform-A in place.” Platform-A represents the advertising services AOL will offer marketers seeking display ad options.