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| | | July 20, 2003
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Sunday, July 20, 2003 |
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Yahoo! snaps up Overture
On Monday, Internet giant Yahoo! announced it will acquire Overture Services in a cash and stock swap deal worth $1.63 billion. Overture, with an advertiser base of over 88,000 mainly small and medium-sized business, provides paid search listings that appear in the search results of numerous web portals, including AltaVista, InfoSpace, Lycos, MSN and Yahoo!.
With the latest buyout, Yahoo! hopes to become the largest player in the Internet advertising market, but the company is also in the final stages of its plan to obtain complete control over its search services. After the December 2002 acquisition of Inktomi and the currently pending deal with Overture, Yahoo! will be having a total grasp over both the algorithmic and the paid inclusion side of its listings. Yahoo!, however, remains dependent on its biggest rival Google, which continues to provide the company's web portal relevant search results.
Consolidation in the Internet search market has been widely seen in recent months. Earlier this year, Overture bought AltaVista and the web search unit of Fast Search & Transfer (FAST). With its own takeover, online search will remain in the hands of three major players -- Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!. Microsoft has for years been the most dependent on third parties, outsourcing the entire spectrum of its search functions. Two of its key partners -- Inktomi and Overture Services -- will now be part of its arch rival Yahoo!, leaving Microsoft's Internet division either in search of other paid listings' providers, such as Google, or establishing its own technological presence in the market.
More from: BusinessWeek | CNET News.com 1 2 3 4 | ComputerWorld | eWeek | InternetNews.com | The Mercury News | Reuters | The Washington Post 1 2 | Wired News
PeopleSoft completes J.D. Edwards takeover
Business software maker PeopleSoft Inc. said it has completed its acquisition of Colorado-based J.D. Edwards & Co. In a press release, the company announced 88 percent of J.D. Edwards' shares have been tendered to PeopleSoft, but more than 90 percent will be needed to avoid a shareholder approval vote. The deal, estimated at about $1.8 billion, comes as Oracle is in a hostile takeover battle for PeopleSoft itself.
Previously, Oracle preferred to avoid a PeopleSoft-J.D. Edwards merger, but with the latter on board, its acquisition offer of $19.50 per share now amounts to about $7.3 billion, since PeopleSoft issued 52.6 million additional shares to buy J.D. Edwards. In response to the announcement, Oracle claimed time is on its side and vowed to continue its pursuit of the combined company. Oracle's takeover bid is currently under regulatory scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In the meantime, PeopleSoft said it expects all J.D. Edwards shares to be tendered by the end of August.
More from: CNET News.com | NewsFactor | Reuters | VNUNET.com | The Washington Post
July earnings season sees a tech rally
Technology stocks rose substantially in the last few months and investors were eager to learn how IT companies performed in the past quarter. Still, computer makers and Internet media giants alike painted a mixed picture, lacking unanimous guidance for the rest of the year.
 World's second largest chip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc. posted a second-quarter loss of $140 million, or 40 cents a share -- smaller than from a year ago. AMD said it sees improvement in Q3.
More from: CNET News.com | The Mercury News | Reuters
Apple Computer posted third-quarter results that exceeded analysts expectations. Although revenue was up to $1.54 billion, the company's profit of $19 million, or 5 cents a share, was down 68 percent from the same period a year ago.
More from: CNET News.com | MacCentral | The Register | Reuters | Wired News
Storage solutions provider EMC beat Wall Streets expectations in the second-quarter, posting a profit of $82 million, or 4 cents a share, while analysts expected earnings of 3 cents a common share. In Q2, EMC's revenue rose to $1.48 billion from $1.39 billion a year ago.
More from: CNET News.com | eWeek | InfoWorld | InternetNews.com | Reuters
Computer maker IBM met analysts' expectations reporting earnings of $1.7 billion, or 98 cents per share on revenue of $21.6 billion.
More from: CNET News.com | Reuters
Intel announced its earnings for the quarter doubled from a year ago soaring to $896 million, or 14 cents a share.
More from: CNET News.com | The Mercury News | Reuters | The Washington Post
Microsoft posted a huge profit of $1.92 billion, or 18 cents a share for the quarter that ended June 30. The results also include the burden of a recent antitrust lawsuit settlement between the Redmond, Washington-based software maker and AOL Time Warner Inc., representing a subtraction of 5 cents a share.
More from: CNET News.com | InfoWorld | The Register | USA Today | The Washington Post
PeopleSoft reported widely expected strong results in the second-quarter. Despite being in the middle of an uncertain three-way merger battle, involving the world's second largest software company, Oracle, PeopleSoft's net earnings reached $36.5 million, or 11 cents per share.
More from: CNET News.com | Reuters
Security watch
Microsoft warned of a widespread critical security vulnerability in its Windows operating system. The flaw, which affects a number of Windows versions, including Windows XP and recently launched Windows Server 2003, exists in the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) interface. A specifically malformed request made using the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol may allow an attacker to run code of his or her choice, essentially taking over the control of the vulnerable system. Microsoft has made available patches for the security hole and has also released two other updates dubbed "important," fixing security issues in Windows XP and Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2000.
More from: CNET News.com | ComputerWorld 1 2 | InternetNews.com | Reuters | VNUNET.com
News spread on Wednesday about a major security flaw in Cisco's Internetworking Operating System (IOS) that could lead to large-scale denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. The IOS software runs Cisco routers and other devices, representing critical network infrastructure. Cisco Systems released a security advisory, saying a specific sequence of packets sent to routers running vulnerable software could cause them to think their input queues are full, and eventually fail. Just hours later, a fully operational exploit tool was widely available on the Internet, triggering a string of attacks on Cisco routers. No significant outages, however, were reported.
More from: CNET News.com 1 2 3 | ComputerWorld 1 2 | CRN 1 2 | InternetNews.com 1 2 | Reuters
Security experts around the world were deeply troubled about the two flaws, which affected hundreds of millions of computers and other devices. Fears that their nearly simultaneous announcement could trigger major attacks on both personal computers and Internet backbones prompted Internet security companies and software providers to urge users and network administrators to immediately update their products. More from: CNET News.com
In Other News...
In a reorganizational move, AOL Time Warner spun off the Mozilla group, forming the unaffiliated non-profit The Mozilla Foundation. In addition, America Online laid off 50 employees at its Netscape Communications subsidiary, some of which, according to the media conglomerate, were rehired by the new foundation. AOL also said it does not plan to discontinue its development of the Netscape browser, nor to close the Netscape web portal.
In an internal e-mail on Wednesday, Oracle announced two of its senior executives have resigned. Mark Jarvis, the software maker's Chief Marketing Officer, a senior vice president and a 14-year Oracle veteran, and George Roberts, the former head of North American sales, have ceded their posts. Former Morgan Stanley software analyst Charles Phillips, who joined Oracle in May this year, will be responsible for the company's marketing.
Popular travel site Orbitz was hit by a major outage on Wednesday, related to Oracle's database software. The unavailability of the site lasted for hours and was the most severe in the company's history. Orbitz was particularly affected since the middle of the summer is one of the most active travel periods of the year.
Internet monitoring firm Nielsen//NetRatings reported use of file-sharing applications has dropped by 15 percent in the first week after the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) threatened to sue individual file-swappers. Copyrighted audiovisual and software products continue to be available on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, but a substantial decrease in uploads and downloads has been recorded.
After shareholders' consent, Texas-based Dell Computer officially changed its name to "Dell Inc." The move was widely expected, after in May the company announced plans to rename itself, in order for its name to better reflect its product line, which is no longer restricted to providing computers only.
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