Reported exclusively on TechCrunch.com, Yahoo! will be announcing the acquisition of Zimbra tonight. The acquisition details were noted to be USD$350 million in cash. Yahoo! seems to still have quite a bit of cash laying around and they felt like they needed to jump on board with the Office Train.
With Microsoft already scared that Google will soon be an influence in the office application industry, this is yet another fear for Microsoft to have.
At this point, it really feels like an arms race of who can acquire the most companies in the shortest amount of time. Let’s take a look at the time line of events here.
- Yahoo! Acquires Zimbra 09/17/2007
- Microsoft Acquires Parlano 08/31/2007
- Yahoo! acquires BuzzTracker 09/14/2007
- Google Secures Postini Acquisition 09/14/2007
- Yahoo! Acquires BlueLithium 09/04/2007
- Google Acquires FeedBurner 06/02/2007
- Google Acquires DoubleClick 04/01/2007
- Microsoft acquires aQuantive 05/18/2007
- Google Acquires Trendalyzer 03/16/2007
This long list of acquisitions, and by no means is it comprehensive and complete, is just a short time line of what the three major players have been doing lately. Acquire this, acquire that, seems like everyone is just being acquired these days.
Will any of the three actually be able to come together to create a solid product from all these acquisitions? I doubt it, not any time soon. In the next couple years? Maybe.
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