DEALS & MERGERS
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WebMergers.com
Information and advice on the dot-com merger/acquisition market.
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AOL Time Warner: Who's Laughing Now?
Old-school Netizens have looked down on America Online for years, and Wall Street looked down on its merger with Time Warner; but once again, AOL has proven its staying power and savvy by surviving the merger and NASDAQ's recent problems. (3/19/2001 at Business Week)
AmEx Heeds Call of Liberty
American Express and America Online Time Warner Netscape have joined Sun's Liberty Alliance, the planned alternative to Microsoft's planned Passport authentication system. (12/5/2001 at ZDNet)
Antitrust Enforcers’ Actions on Mergers Chill Wall Street
"Antitrust cops" in both the U.S. and Europe are giving investors and corporations pause when they consider mergers and acquisitions, and in some cases stopping deals before they're proposed. (9/6/2000 at MSNBC)
AOL and Time Warner to Merge
America Online and Time Warner will merge, if their stockholders approve of the deal. The deal would create the largest media company in the world, worth about $350 million. (1/10/2000 at CNNfn)
AOL and Time Warner's Marriage of Insecurity
AOL's buyout of Time Warner might not be born of opportunity, but out of fear. AOL needs high-speed connectivity for its customers; Time Warner can provide it with its cable TV operation. Time Warner has never had a good online strategy; AOL has. (1/10/2000 at Salon.com)
AOL-Time Warner Merger Raises Questions About Journalism, Concentrated Ownership
The merger of America Online and Time Warner is causing concern among some media analysts. It's a harbinger of future media and industry consolidation; and, unfortunately, big business often means bad journalism. (1/11/2000 at The Freedom Forum Online)
AOL-Time Warner: The New Old Thing?
A series of articles that examine the AOL-Time Warner buyout from a variety of angles. (1/11/2000 at The Industry Standard)
Are Net Deals Better Than Viagra?
In a wave of mergers and deals among Net healthcare sites, hundred of millions of dollars are being thrown about. (1/25/2000 at The Industry Standard)
Barnes & Noble Buys Out Fatbrain
Barnes & Noble has bought Fatbrain.com, the online bookstore formerly known as Computer Literacy Books, and parent company of MightyWords. (9/14/2000 at NewsBytes)
Bertelsmann Buys CDnow
Bertelsmann, the Germany company with large commercial interests in barnesandnoble.com and AOL Europe, has bought ailing music etailer CDNow. (7/20/2000 at The Industry Standard)
Building a Partnership Portfolio
Yahoo announces 2-3 new partnerships a week, but actually participates in a great deal more. Inking deals with content and technology partners can be key in developing a web business. (12/6/1999 at The Industry Standard)
Cash-Hungry MarchFirst Scores $150 Million
MarchFirst, a tech consulting firm formed from dozens of other companies through a series of mergers, has received a life-saving investment from Francisco Partners. (12/14/2000 at The Industry Standard)
CNET-Ziff-Davis: One More Confusing Merger
Links to many media reactions to the purchase of ZDNet by CNet. (7/20/2000 at The Industry Standard)
Covad, SBC Shack Up
DSL provider Covad Communications and local telco SBC Communications have signed a $600 million contract with each other, and SBC has invested $150 million in its new partner; this follows August's NorthPoint/Verizon merger. (9/15/2000 at Forbes)
David Wetherell
CMGI Chairman David Wetherell talks about the holding company's plans for the future; plans to enforce Altavista's patents on basic Internet searching technology; and lessons learned from the market in 2000. (1/15/2001 at Internet World)
Didn't We Read This Story Yesterday?
Listen.com's proposed buyout of bankrupt scour.com didn't get much media coverage, as it occurred in the shadow of Bertelsmann's deal with Napster. (11/2/2000 at The Industry Standard)
Dot.coms Teaching a Lesson to the Old School
AOL's acquisition of Time Warner demonstrates the inability of old-style companies to adapt to the Internet economy. (1/25/2000 at The Salt Lake Tribune)
DrKoop.com Sews Up Deal For DrDrew.com's Assets
In a deal that some see as a steal, some see as foolish, DrKoop.com has bought DrDrew.com for $1.5 million. (11/2/2000 at NewsBytes)
E-book Makers Sold to a TV-Centric Company
Gemstar, a previously TV-focused technology company, has acquired NuvoMedia and SoftBook Press, the two leading ebook makers. (1/19/2000 at Salon.com)
E-mergers Trigger Privacy Worries
As online companies merge, questions arise as to what happens to the consumer information they have accumulated, and whether the acquiring companies are bound by the privacy policies of the acquired. (1/23/2000 at Mercury Center)
Excite@Home to Separate Cable and Content Divisions
The corporation hopes to signal that its media assets and its bandwidth provision are completely different businesses. (11/22/1999 at The New York Times)
FCC Approves AOL-Time Warner Merger
The Federal Communications Commission has given conditioned approval of the AOL-Time Warner merger; full text of their decision, and statements from the FCC commissioners, are available. (1/13/2001 at FCC)
FTC Approves AOL/Time Warner Merger with Conditions
"The Federal Trade Commission has accepted a proposed consent order that would remedy the likely anticompetitive effects of the proposed merger of America Online, Inc. ... and Time Warner Inc." (12/14/2000 at The Federal Trade Commission)
FTC Tries to Stop Sale of Toysmart Customer Lists
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is trying to keep bankrupt Toysmart from selling information about past customers, saying it would violate the privacy policy under which consumers revealed information. (7/10/2000 at The Industry Standard)
The Geeks vs. the Marketroids
Much of the press has ignored the true significance of the AOL/Time Warner merger: the companies, with their closed-access mindsets, will undoubtedly try to Balkanize the Internet, splitting their content and technology empire from the rest. (1/14/2000 at Salon.com)
Holding Out for 'Open Access' to Cable
Regulators in Florida are refusing to transfer cable licenses from Time Warner to the combined AOL Time Warner until they get binding assurances that the merged company will allow other Internet companies access to customers through the cable lines. (9/27/2000 at The Washington Post)
In Rewritten Internet Fables, the Late Bird Gets the Worm
IWon.com, a small privately-held Internet firm, bought and continues to operate web portal Excite.com for under $10 million; three years ago, Excite was valued at $6.7 billion. (12/27/2001 at The New York Times)
Indie Record Labels Fear Mega-Mergers
The Independent Music Companies Association (IMPALA) is asking the European Commission to take steps and make rules to ensure that the AOL/Time Warner merger and Vivendi takeover of Universal won't hurt independent music labels or small-time artists. (9/5/2000 at The Industry Standard)
internet.com Acquires ClickZ Network
internet.com has acquired the Clickz network, a marketing-oriented Net magazine and conference organizer, for $16 million. (9/11/2000 at ClickZ Network)
Investors Scrutinize Media Metrix-Jupiter Merger
Investors reacted poorly to the announced merger of Media Metrix and Jupiter Communications, two Internet-market-analysis firms. (6/27/2000 at The Industry Standard)
Is Fear Driving The Alliance Frenzy?
The recent spate of mergers between online giants and real-world giants - AOL and Wal-Mart, Yahoo and Kmart, etc. - may be driven by the brick-and-mortars' fears of being left behind. (12/17/1999 at ECommerce Times)
Justice Department Shines Its Antitrust Spotlight on Music Labels
The U.S. Justice Department and antitrust regulators in the European Union are examining Pressplay and MusicNet, the major music labels' planned online music services. (8/6/2001 at The Industry Standard)
Limits May Emerge for AOL Deal
The Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission are putting together a list of conditions for the merger of America Online and Time Warner. (9/6/2000 at The New York Times)
The Merger
What does the AOL/Time Warner merger mean? It's not as big a deal, for good or ill, as the media would have you believe. (1/17/2000 at NUA Internet Surveys)
Mergers Threaten Internet's Informal System of Data Exchange
Peering - in which Internet service companies transmit each other's data - may be threatened as backbone providers merge. As the network consolidates, the need for larger players to accept traffic from smaller players diminishes. (2/14/2000 at The New York Times)
Microsoft and AOL Discuss Linking Products
Microsoft and AOL, each a giant in their own part of the industry, are having highly contentious talks regarding cross-promotion of their products. (6/4/2001 at The New York Times)
Net Invitation Site Evite Seeking a Buyer
Evite.com, despite having $17 million in cash, is seeking a buyer. (11/3/2000 at News.com)
The Net's Frontera Nueva?
Microsoft and Lycos have launched Spanish-language portals in Latin American countries, following in the footsteps of AOL and Yahoo, which already have Brazil-based sites. (10/27/1999 at The Industry Standard)
PlanetOut Expands Its Universe
As PlanetOut buys two gay-oriented print magazines, some worry it will result in less diversity in gay media. (9/7/2000 at SF Gate)
The Shape of Open Source to Come
Six months ago, Rob Malda refused to sell Slashdot to VA Linux, in order to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest; now that VA Linux has acquired Andover.Net, he's part of the VA Linux empire. (2/3/2000 at Salon.com)
Tech Start-Ups Merging in Hopes of Survival
Small high-tech companies in the San Francisco Bay Area are merging at a frantic pace, in the hopes of staving off failure; some wonder if it's equivalent to "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." (10/8/2001 at Siliconvalley.com)
Value of Web Start-Ups Falling Fast
Acquisition of web-based companies is much cheaper now than it was a year ago; valuations are way down. (3/2/2001 at Excite News)
VeriSign to Provide Authentication Services for MS' .NET
Verisign will provide authentication and security technology to support Microsoft's .Net. (7/10/2001 at InternetNews.com)
Web Addresses Get New Lives
Companies which buy the domain names and assets of dead dot-coms sometimes run into trouble with the liabilities of the old owners - when Allwall.com bought Art.com, for example, they had to deal with an expensive coupon campaign which was ongoing. (10/9/2001 at MSNBC)
Webmergers: Internet Companies Getting Cheaper
According to WebMergers, the cost of acquiring a U.S. Internet company is falling; from an average price of $37 million in the second quarter of 2001 to $25 million in the third. (10/3/2001 at NUA Internet Surveys)
What Will the New Lycos Look Like?
Analysts disagree over the difficulty involved in integrating Lycos, an American dot-com, and Terra Networks, the Spanish corporation that plans to purchase it. (5/18/2000 at News.com)
What's a Subscriber Worth?
An analysis of thestreet.com's subscriber base, and how the company's financial disclosures obfuscate the issue of how it's earning and spending money. (11/18/1999 at MSNBC)
WSJ: AOL Time Warner Makes AT&T Offer
According to the Wall Street Journal, AOL Time Warner (Netscape) wants to merge its cable business with AT&T's cable business. (9/9/2001 at Yahoo News)
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