Top Tech Acquisitions Of 2009
"At the beginning of 2009, acquisitions were at a standstill. But as the economy begrudgingly roused itself from recession, the deal flow started to pick up in the summer, and then rebounded more in the third quarter. There are still a couple weeks left in the year, and a lot can still happen, such as Google buying Yelp for more than $500 million. But with the year wrapping up, we put together an initial list of the top technology acquisitions of 2009.
We’ll update the list if necessary at the end of the year (for instance, we don’t include Yelp in our list because it is not yet final), but it is not likely to change by much. Out of $64 billion worth of technology M&A Crunchbase tracked in 2009, about $54 billion went to the top 30 deals ((see table below). These are only technology deals (Web, software, hardware, mobile) and do not include cleantech or biotech (nor do they include other industries Crunchbase tracks as well).
The largest announced deal, Oracle’s $7.4 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems, is still awaiting regulatory approval. But it set the pattern for bottom-fishing during a financially difficult year. Hewlett-Packard picked up 3Com for $2.7 billion (No. 8) and Intel bought Wind River for $884 million (No. 16), while Microsoft unloaded Razorfish for $530 million (No. 23).
Some of the more significant deals in terms of potential market impact include Amazon’s $1.2 billion shoe-buying spree with Zappos (No. 14), Google’s $750 million acquisition of mobile ad network AdMob (No. 20), and Cisco’s $590 million Pure Digital/Flip Video deal (No. 21). And social gaming saw a lot of activity this year. Two days after Electronic Arts bought Playfish for $400 million (No. 27), competitor Playdom raised money at a $260 million (pre-money) valuation.
Other notable deals which didn’t make the top 30 include American Express paying $300 million for Revolution Money (which would have put it at No. 35), Intuit’s purchases of Mint (No. 45) and PayCycle (No. 46) for $170 million apiece, Google’s $106 million acquisition of On2 Technologies (No. 57), Facebook’s $47.5 million purchase of FriendFeed (No. 86), MySpace’s $20 million deal for iLike (No. 133), and Apple’s $17 million for LaLa (No. 143).
The top 30 tech M&A deals are below:
Company Acquirer price
1. Sun Microsystems Oracle Corporation $7,400,000,000
2. Affiliated Computer Services Xerox $5,750,000,000
3. Sanyo Panasonic $4,600,000,000
4. Marvel Entertainment The Walt Disney Company $4,000,000,000
5. Perot Systems Dell $3,900,000,000
6. Tandberg Cisco $3,000,000,000
7. Unitymedia Liberty Global $3,000,000,000
8. 3Com Hewlett-Packard $2,700,000,000
9. Starent Networks Cisco $2,600,000,000
10. Data Domain EMC Corporation $2,100,000,000
11. Omniture Adobe Systems $1,800,000,000
12. Varian Agilent $1,500,000,000
13. SPSS IBM $1,200,000,000
14. Zappos Amazon $1,200,000,000
15. Wind River Intel $884,000,000
16. iPCS Sprint Nextel $831,000,000
17. Interwoven Autonomy $775,000,000
18. Nortel Networks Ciena $769,000,000
19. AdMob Google $750,000,000
20. Pure Digital Technologies Cisco $590,000,000
21. WildBlue ViaSat $568,000,000
22. Razorfish Publicis Groupe $530,000,000
23. Virgin Mobile USA Sprint Nextel $483,000,000
24. Web Reservations International Hellman & Friedman $458,000,000
25. LifeSize Communications Logitech $405,000,000
26. Playfish Electronic Arts $400,000,000
27. BuscaPe Naspers $374,000,000
28. SpringSource VMware $362,000,000
29. BBN Technologies Raytheon $350,000,000
30. Retail Convergence GSI Commerce $350,000,000"
More Buyouts
"Google and Yelp are in advanced acquisition negotiations, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. And while the deal isn’t done, we’ve heard that it’s very likely to close. The price is supposedly at least $500 million.
Yelp was founded in 2004 as a way to let users leave reviews on local businesses. Comscore puts worldwide traffic at nearly 9 million monthly unique visitors, and it has been growing fast – the company says it’s real numbers are more like 25 million monthly uniques.
Yelp has whispered that 2009 revenues will be around $30 million and are expecting $50 million or so in 2010.
Yelp last raised venture capital in early 2008 from DAG at a $200 million pre-money valuation, we’ve heard. They’ve raised a total of $31 million over four venture rounds.
On the odds of the deal happening – one source says its 80% likely. Not signed, sealed and delivered, but past the term sheet stage.
Google is building out their own directory of local businesses with its Place Pages, which can be accessed via Google Maps and local search. They are encouraging local businesses to put Google-branded stickers in store windows and recently added their own ratings summaries to business profiles. Yelp, of course, already has all of this data, along with a growing and active audience of consumers who are used to finding (and rating) businesses on Yelp.
For their part, Google is clearly on a shopping spree. They recently acquired AdMob for $750 million, and were in the running on the LaLa acquisition. Expect lots of deals to be announced by them over the next three months."
Sherlock Holmes
"Imagine if Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson had a conversation like this:
‘It’s elementary, my dear Watson. There is no God and life was not created. The god hypothesis is rather discredited.’
‘Yes, Holmes, such religious beliefs are just myths from the past … Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely … Only with the discovery of the double helix and the ensuing genetic revolution have we had grounds for thinking that the powers held traditionally to be the exclusive property of the gods might one day be ours … ,’ said Dr Watson.
The above statements were made recently by a real Dr Watson and his former research colleague, Dr Crick, in a London Daily Telegraph (UK) report.
These two ardent atheists are being honored this year on the 50th anniversary of their discovery of the double helix structure of the molecule of heredity, DNA.
The newspaper report states, ‘The two scientists who discovered the structure of DNA in Cambridge 50 years ago have used the anniversary to mount an attack on religion.’
Without doubt, their discovery was a milestone in biochemistry and genetics. But sadly, these two scientists’ disdain for the Bible and creation is reflected in the commemorative displays and paraphernalia associated with this anniversary.
The Science Centre in London (located right beside the famous Natural History Museum) has a display of Watson and Crick’s original DNA model, as well as an exhibit to teach the thousands of students who visit daily about DNA, genes, etc. I visited this display during my recent speaking tour.
It was so sad, in fact distressing, to watch thousands of young and impressionable students read such statements as:
‘Some of us think that we humans have a special place in the animal kingdom. However, the human genome is similar to a chimpanzee’s, and has a lot in common with the genome of a fruit fly.’
In other words, humans are really no different to a chimp or a fruit fly. After all, from an evolutionary perspective we are all just animals—humans are not special.
Watson and Crick (and most secular scientists today) basically believe that because we now know from DNA that life functions on the basis of the the laws of chemistry and physics, those laws, not a Creator, produced life. However, this is an illogical conclusion.
Noticeably missing from the discussions and exhibits was material concerning the information and code system of which DNA is a part—which creation scientists like Dr Werner Gitt have pointed out—could not arise as a result of mere physical and chemical laws, but had to be produced by an intelligence (the Creator God)—see Q & A: Information Theory.
The UK Post Office even issued five stamps to commemorate this anniversary [see Apes are our brothers—just ask the Post Office]. One of the stamps (see right) pictured a chimp and a man staring at each other—representing the belief that DNA research supposedly shows chimps and humans are closely related.1
As I walked through the Science Centre Exhibits and the Natural History Museum, read the newspaper articles on Watson and Crick and obtained a set of the commemorative stamps, my soul ached to see the AiG Creation Museum up and running so we can be more effective in stemming the tide of atheistic evolutionary humanism sweeping the globe.
I wonder what effect Watson and Crick might have had on the world if they had concluded, ‘It’s elementary, my dear Watson; just as Romans 1:20 states, it’s obvious there is an all-powerful God.’ They sadly didn’t say this, but we can!"
