Top Items:
InfoWorld:
Microsoft, Yahoo agree on buyout price — After much internal debate and industry speculation, Yahoo today agreed to be acquired by Microsoft, adding $2.6 billion to Redmond's original offer of $44.6 billion on Jan. 31. — The agreement was reached near midnight last night …
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Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
More on MicroHoo: Irritated Investors! Angry Arbs! Zen Microsoft? — So, I was making the rounds again of my sources at Yahoo's major institutional investors yesterday and here's the overall 411: Frustration. Confusion. Impatience. — And the bottom line from several of them-if Yahoo does …
Matthew Karnitschnig / Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft Unlikely to Raise Yahoo Offer — Microsoft Corp. is preparing to lay a long siege. — Two months after Microsoft made its $44.6 billion offer to acquire Yahoo Inc., the software maker has no plans to raise its bid, people close to the company say.
Discussion:
Between the Lines, paidContent.org, Seeking Alpha, Silicon Alley Insider, BoomTown, Tech Beat and BloggingStocks
Philip Tucker / Official Google Docs Blog:
Bringing the cloud with you — We know that many of you have been waiting for offline access to Google Docs, and I'm happy to tell you we'll be rolling it out over the next few weeks, starting today with a small percentage of users. — Here's why I'm excited about this development.
Discussion:
Google Operating System, Ajaxian, The Blog Herald, The Last Podcast, WebProNews, ReadWriteWeb, Zoho Blogs, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, mathewingram.com/work, Lifehacker, Dan's Tech-n-Stuff Weblog, BetaNews, STARTUP CHATTER, Web Worker Daily, TECH.BLORGE.com, VentureBeat, Googlified, FastCompany.TV, HighTouch and Mashable!
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Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Microsoft's $1 Million Guarantee Program To Win Searchers — Microsoft executives, worried that the plan to acquire Yahoo for an estimated $40 billion, have hatched an alternative plan that might bring about success over Google at a much cheaper cost. To win in search, Microsoft may pay people not to use Google.
Sir Richard Branson / Official Google Blog:
Announcing Project Virgle — In my life, I've had a lot of exciting adventures and launched a lot of ambitious business ventures. I'm delighted today to announce Virgle, Inc., a joint venture between the Virgin Group and Google which qualifies on both counts.
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Duncan Riley / TechCrunch:Google And Virgin Team For Human Settlement On Mars
Discussion:
Ed Burnette's Dev Connection, Search Engine Watch Blog, PSFK, Google Maps Mania, broadstuff and Mashable!
Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch:
Windows: A Monopoly Shakes — [Editor's Note: This is the first of two posts pulling data from Forrester report, “Enterprise Desktop And Web 2.0/SaaS Platform Trends, 2007”.] — Forrester Research published the data on Thursday, but only released it publicly today.
Discussion:
Brandon Live!, All about Microsoft, Howard Lindzon, Voices, Smalltalk Tidbits … and Digital Daily
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Why We're Suing Facebook For $25 Million In Statutory Damages — When I started TechCrunch nearly three years ago it was meant to be little more than a hobby. I love startups, and writing about them was fun, not work. But since then this hobby has grown into a real business.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, MediaFile, Profy.Com, Hee-Haw Marketing, The Trademark Blog, Identity Woman and Paying Attention
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Austin Modine / The Register:
Dell axes 900 jobs in Austin plant shutdown — But hey, $3bn in savings! — Round Rock's Sword of Dell-ocles has once again dropped on employees of the world's number two PC manufacturer. — Dell today said it will close its Austin, Texas desktop PC manufacturing plant and lay-off 800-900 workers.
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Dave McClure / Master of 500 Hats:
Web 3.0 isn't the Semantic Web, it's Hailstorm 2.0. Why it Matters & How Microsoft-Yahoo can beat Google. — note: this isn't an April Fool's post, at least not intentionally... Semantic Web, WTF? — Nigga please, tell me something i give a s**t about.
Discussion:
Outside the Lines
Adam Sherwin / Times of London:
The Facebook tool which turns your mobile into a snoop — Husbands who are not where they are supposed to be could soon be in danger of being “sniffed” out by a mobile phone service that gives suspicious partners an electronic map showing the location of their spouse.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
YouTube RickRolls Users — If you aren't familiar with RickRolling - it's when someone puts a link on website to something, but it actually takes you to a music video of Rick Astley's “hit” song Never Gonna Give You Up. — YouTube is RickRolling its own users on April 1.
Josh Lowensohn / Webware.com:
Scribd now offering free document scanning — We know it's April 1st, but this is 100% real. I made James Yu, Senior Product Developer at Scribd swear on his unborn first child that this isn't an April fool's gag. Starting today the document hosting company will take any of your real documents …
Discussion:
Mashable!
Linux Foundation Announcements:
Linux Foundation Publishes Study on Linux Development Statistics: Who Writes Linux and Who Supports It — A close look at Linux kernel development process reveals the number of Linux kernel developers has tripled over the last three years — SAN FRANCISCO - April 1, 2008 — The Linux Foundation …
Brady Forrest / O'Reilly Radar:
Sharing My Location Just the Way I Like It — I've been waiting eagerly for FireEagle. It launched at ETech (video & Radar post). It's Yahoo's service for brokering locations. The app itself is very simple and clear; it's the way it should be because it can be used to make some very big mistakes.
InfoWorld:
Norway asks to suspend its ‘Yes’ vote on OOXML — Members of the Norwegian technical committee that voted to ratify Microsoft's OOXML document format as an ISO standard are protesting that decision even before the full results of the standards body's vote on the technology have been announced.
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