Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
News Corp. Scrambles To Bid For Yahoo — The rumors keep on rolling around the surprise semi-hostile Microsoft bid for Yahoo this morning. Sillicon Alley Insider says they've heard that a couple of hedge funds were already preparing their own bids for Yahoo, and were (or perhaps still are) days away from making their move.
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Dan Farber / Between the Lines:
Meanwhile back at the Yahoo ranch, Flickr Video is coming soon — With the unsolicited bid by Microsoft, and potentially other suitors (TechCrunch reports News Corp. trying to put together a bid) who want to derail the combination, Yahoo has its hands full.
Fred / A VC:
The Times Are Indeed Changin' (continued) — In the interview with Sam Gustin last week, I said: … It looks like that scenario is coming true faster than I thought when I uttered those words. As Bill Burnham (not my partner Brad Burnham) said in a post yesterday on the YHOO-MSFT deal:
Duncan Riley / TechCrunch:
Microsoft-Yahoo: What Will Stay And What Will Go? — While the tech world waits to see whether Yahoo will accept Microsoft's $44.6 billion takeover bid, Microsoft and Yahoo employees sleep restlessly at the prospect of massive staff cuts if the takeover goes ahead.
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
News Corp Trying to Mount Yahoo Bid (NWS/YHOO) — TechCrunch reports that News Corp is also frantically trying to put together a competing bid for Yahoo, with the help of private equity firms*. This makes sense, given News Corp's previous interest in trading MySpace for a big Yahoo equity stake.
Discussion:
CNET News.com
Marc Andreessen / blog.pmarca.com:
Inaugurating the New York Times Deathwatch — [With apologies in advance to Martin Nisenholtz, who I believe is genuinely fighting the good fight, and who will no doubt end up with a great job at some fine Internet company.] — The hiring of Bill Kristol was the last straw. — I can't take it anymore.
Joe Nocera / New York Times:
A Giant Bid That Shows How Tired the Giant Is — Oh, how the mighty have fallen. — This may seem like an odd way to characterize a company that just announced its willingness to plunk down $44.6 billion to make its first hostile takeover ever. A company that will probably generate …
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Skrentablog:
The peanut butter jar is empty — I was rooting for Jerry Yang. Tech founder returns to helm to take over. That's a story I have to get behind. — But it never seemed to me like he was fully in charge. I wonder how make stakeholders Consensus had over there in the top suite.
Jason Harris / Download Squad:
BBC's iPlayer adds support for Firefox — Rumors have been swirling for months that the BBC was going to allow users of their iPlayer service to access the popular player on a computer or platform other than Internet Explorer for Windows. Well today British citizens are part way there as the BBC …
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Miro, a nonprofit Web TV player with big ideals, launches co-branding service — Web video may seem like a tough field for any company to enter, much less a nonprofit. — But the Participatory Culture Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization, says its Miro video player can play RSS-enabled videos hosted anywhere …
Discussion:
Mashable!
Darren Murph / Engadget:
WiFi trial comes to San Francisco's BART trains — Merely hours after hearing that a contactless payment trial was going live on San Francisco's BART, along comes word that a test of a slightly different nature was also underway on the very same public transportation system.
KathrynV / DSLreports:
Spectrum Auction: $18 Billion and Beyond - B-block gets all of the attention while D-block remains ignored — Bidding at the FCC spectrum auction exceeded the FCC s $10 billion goal earlier this week. Although bidding has started to slow down, the total amount of bids surpassed $18 billion yesterday …
Discussion:
RCR Wireless News
Sue Chang / MarketWatch:
House panel holding Feb. 8 Microsoft-Yahoo hearing: report — SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - The House Judiciary Committee will convene a hearing on Feb. 8 to examine Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT:, , ) proposed takeover of Yahoo Inc. (YHOO:, , ) , The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site late Friday.
BBC:
In pictures: Mobile design competition — Royal College of Art students were set the challenge of designing a mobile phone to “outperform, outsmart, and outmanoeuvre everything on the market”. — One of three winners in the competition, sponsored by 3, was Vase.
