Genentech laughs off $43.7 billion buyout offer

You're forgiven if you don't know there's a company a few miles north of Google that pulls in more than $10 billion a year selling drugs. Genentech makes the cancer treatment Avastin, the arthritis and lymphoma drug Rituxan, and the breast cancer fighter Herceptin, each of which bring in a few billion a year. Its stock, which trades under the symbol DNA, nearly touched $100 a share yesterday, a three-year high. Market cap is just over $100 billion, not far behind Google's $118 billion. Once you know all that, it's not surprising that the company nixed a buyout offer from Roche, its majority shareholder. San Francisco's bid to become the world's biotech center is moving more slowly than planned, but just you wait another ten years. These little drug companies are going to get a lot bigger.

Who's Gonna Buy Monster?

CONFONZ — That damn Monster is still outside your house, peeking in the windows. Every once in a while, it knocks on the window and quietly suggests that you need a new job. Well, it seems as though that Monster's got its own window knockers, and they're carrying cash. Earlier this week, the dot com's stock price leapt up like frogs in a dynamite pond. All over rumors of an impending buyer. After the jump, we look at the most recent round of rumored ruffian buyers. More »

Scoop: Nokia buys Ryze business networking

Nokia is buying (or investing in) business networking site Ryze, a LinkedIn competitor that started around the same time as Friendster. More »

Scoop: Weblogs Inc. owners sell Blogsmith to AOL

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Riya launches Like.com: That world-changing image search technology is now a shopping site

Remember Riya, the image search site that was going to Change The World by searching images not through tags, but through analyzing the actual content of a photo? Well now you can use it to buy handbags. More »

Behind the deal: How Google bought a lawsuit (and knew it)

"Google in bid to halt YouTube legal threat," shouts the Financial Times. "Google is engaged in a frantic round of negotiations aimed at persuading traditional media companies to supply their content to YouTube, the video website it bought last month for $1.65bn, and ward off a potentially crippling round of lawsuits." More »

The existential monologues of a Reddit millionaire

Dot-com millionaires should be unequivocally giddy, right? Not this one. Aaron Swartz, co-founder of Reddit, has been writing intriguing, at times haunting, essays about Wired's purchase of his startup, and his new wealth. In "The Afterparty, for example, he writes: More »

Behind the deal: JotSpot price rumored at $50 million

Word is that Google paid $50 million when it recently bought JotSpot (a deal that was arranged over a month ago but was only announced yesterday). Word also is that JotSpot's technology is a piece of crap — which its competitors gleefully acknowledge, though in more appropriate terms. So why did Google dump that much money? More »

Valleyspeak: "Not safe for coffeeshops"

The language is wilting. Time for a new batch of words. More »

Behind the deal, volume IV: Reddit cofounder talks about Wired buyout

The Wired News director who will oversee Reddit now that it's owned by Wired parent Condé Nast, already explained Wired's plan for the social bookmark site to Valleywag. Now Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian offers Reddit's take on the news coverage and the site's future. More »

Behind the deal, volume III: Wired buys Reddit

As TechCrunch reported and Reddit announced this morning, Condé Nast bought social bookmarking site Reddit. I talked to Wired Digital general manager Kourosh Karimkhany, who will directly oversee Reddit as a Wired property. More »

Behind the Acquisition, Volume II: Google buys JotSpot

Google just bought JotSpot, a collaborative wiki creation site, for an undisclosed amount (if you know the price, e-mail tips@valleywag.com). JotSpot announced the buyout on the corporate blog, and CNet picked up the story. More »

Behind the Acquisition, Volume I: SideStep buys TravelPost

Quick, guess the travel startup getting bought today! (Update: It's TravelPost, bought by another startup, SideStep.) A reader tells Valleywag: More »

Five reasons Yahoo should stop trying to buy AOL

Each Yahoo acquisition prediction — will they buy Facebook? YouTube? Ebay? Will they sell to Disney? — is followed by expert analyses of each theoretical deal's implications. So now that Fortune says Yahoo wants to buy AOL from Time Warner, let's list the... More »

Faceoff: Yahoo still wimping out on Facebook

After three months of stalled talks, reports the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo is still nowhere close to buying Facebook. the real question is no longer "when will Yahoo buy Facebook" but "why hasn't Facebook walked away?" And the answer is that Facebook must be more desperate than they pretend. More »

GoogTube aftermath: What is Blinkx, and do lawsuits have an economy of scale?

• The copyright issue: The top question after Google buys YouTube is, "Will media companies sue over pirated content?" If they do, Google is ready, thanks to its experience defending Google Book Search against publishers, keeping Google Video out of its own copyright suits, and years of fighting for the right to host image thumbnails and cached web pages.

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Yahoo needs to buck up and make a big deal

The New York Times takes a good look at Yahoo's woes today (even throwing in this shot of CEO Terry Semel looking like beleaguered Battlestar Galactica leader Colonel Adama), particularly its struggle to upgrade its advertising system and its inability to land a deal without Google swooping in. More »

Everyone must get sold

CD-swapping site LaLa used some of its nine million bucks to buy an resurrect a dead Internet radio station, WOXY. Just when you thought a site already made obsolete by Amazon, eBay, and iTunes couldn't get any more irrelevant, ya know? More »

Will Google buy Facebook for $2.3 billion?

We're all a little shaky in this scary post-YouTube-acquisition world, so tech site Treadwatch gives another crazy rumor some credence: More »

Loose Wires, GoogTube edition

• Googlewatcher John Battelle transcribes Google's conference call officially announcing the buyout. Revelations: Google Video will not go away and YouTube will still look like (and be called) YouTube. [Battelle's Search Blog]
• Inside Google blogs the call too. Eric Schmidt, says the blog, says YouTube founders Steve and Chad remind him of a younger Larry and Sergey. Expect him to IM them late at night asking if he makes them a little horny. [Inside Google]
• The latest full account from Reuters notes that Google's stock dipped just after the announcement. [Reuters]
• The official press release. [Google]
• Google plans to invest in other video opportunities too. Could the YouTube imitators still sell to Google? [Reuters]
• Inside Google explains the many music deals that Google and YouTube just nailed, killing the common wisdom that copyright suits would do to YouTube what they did to Napster. [Inside Google]

Why Google bought YouTube (even though we all knew it wouldn't)

Okay, we didn't see this coming. We thought that if anyone bought YouTube, it'd be a content company looking for some young bucks to drag it into the future of video distribution. We had no idea a tech company like Google, which is still pimping its own video service, would double up (even though it did this with Urchin and Measure Map for web stats). What did we miss? More »

GoogTube Countdown: YouTube makes deals on the side

• Google's still talking to YouTube about a buyout. One paragraph in the New York Times sums up the situation: "Barring a last-minute snag in the talks, the boards of both Google and YouTube were scheduled to hold separate board meetings on Monday to approve the deal, with an announcement possible after the close of regular trading. Discussions could still break down, however, or another party could present a more-attractive offer." [NY Times DealBook]
• The best evidence that Google won't outright buy YouTube this week is that the video site made three content and licensing deals with CBS, Universal Music Group, and BMG Music. That's the behavior of an independent company, not one about to sell. [USA Today]
• The second-best evidence is the logic outlined by billionaire blogger Mark Cuban: Google should buy the revenue, not the liabilities. [Blog Maverick]
• Michael Arrington, who broke the rumor of YouTube's impending acquisition at his blog TechCrunch, points to the media that confirmed that YouTube and Google are at least talking about such a deal. [TechCrunch]
• A back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming that YouTube's founders, VCs, and employees split a $1.5 billion windfall evenly three ways, would give Sequoia Capital a $500 million return on its $30 million investment. Granted, if $500 million goes to the 60 employees, everyone down to the receptionist should walk a way a comfortable millionaire. Again, this three-way split is just a wild guess. [Mr. Wave Theory]
• Valleywag commenters build theories. For example, YouTube could be pulling an old trick, announcing the Google deal just before talks go sour, then seeing who else bites. [Valleywag]
• The Wall Street Journal expects a possible announcement today of a merger that would leave YouTube an independent fiefdom, keeping its name and its offices. [IP Democracy]

What happens if Google buys YouTube

TechCrunch floats a rumor that Google's buying YouTube for $1.6 billion, calling it "40% likely to be at least partially true." More »

Scoop: Who will Yahoo buy today?

File it under "party rumors" for now, but I hear that Yahoo, fresh from buying video editing service Jumpcut last week, will pick up another company today. More »

Yahoo buys Jumpcut, the actually useful video site

While video giant YouTube stays indie, the mob of smaller video sharing services is selling out, one by one (Grouper to Sony, for example). Today, video mixing service Jumpcut announced that Yahoo bought it, celebrating with a cute video, remixable like all vids on the service. More »

New York Post prints new YouTube self-valuation and old just-got-laid founder photo

The New York Post's tech writer (last seen stalking a Google founder's girlfriend) has Hard! Hitting! News! about YouTube: More »

Why heart Huckabuck?

Huckabuck has at least one thing in common with that ill-fated little online calendar Kiko. The New-Orleans-based "Web 2.0 search engine" is being auctioned off to the highest bidder over at Ebay. The site only makes a dollar a day through pay-per-click ads (making its promise to donate 10% of profits to Katrina victims underwhelming), so the current high bid of $9,100 probably won't rise to anything near the $250K that Kiko earned. More »

News shorts: HP won't invite leaker back to the board

• Hewlett-Packard won't give George Keyworth a chance at re-election for the board next March, after the director leaked info to CNET, got investigated by chairwoman Patricia Dunn, and refused to resign despite his fellow directors' demands. Meanwhile, California's attorney general is investigating HP's investigation. Dunn, Keyworth, and former director Tom Perkins are exchanging barbs, each accusing another of violating their privacy. [Bloomberg]
• Old news will exist again, thanks to the new Google News Archive Search, which Google will announce today. Some archives will stretch back over 200 years. [NY Times, no reg]
• Intel cans ten thousand employees as expected, meanwhile planning to build new factories. [NY Times, no reg]
• Webmail provider Tucows bought Kiko for the same reason the web calendar company failed: Kiko isn't really a product, but it's a great feature. [Tucows Blog]

Six Apart buys Chris Alden. (Oh yeah, and Rojo.)

"It's twice the flavor and half the calories," Rojo CEO Chris Alden said about Web 2.0 in August. Today must taste sweet for the boy who's sold his social feed reader to blogging company Six Apart. More »

So who's buying eBay?

Forget Sun + Apple. The next big deal will be eBay's inevitable merger with one of the two search giants. The net commerce company is already in bed with both Yahoo and Google. More »

InterActiveCorp buys College Humor boys

[Update: Agh, we're two weeks behind with this news. Damn it, our staff sent this Internet to us and it just arrived...] More »

Grouper VP told "big fish" tale

Now, if you were the Sales and Marketing VP of a tiny startup, and Sony was going to buy your little piece of flipmeat in a week, wouldn't you know about it? More »

Grouper denies Sony merger

Online video startup Grouper (pictured) denies any impending deal with Sony, despite an e-mailed rumor that one was buying the other. More »

Viacom buys Shockwave maker .com

We normally don't print acquisition announcements here (numbers are so boring), but the Wall Street Journal just confirmed a tip we got last hour: Viacom is about to buy Atom Entertainment, owner of game site Shockwave.com and video site AtomFilms.com (which currently displays the headline "New Boobs: Watch Now"), for about $200 million. More »

HP saves a scandal-ridden software company

Hewlett-Packard will buy management software company Mercury Interactive, HP just announced. The hardware maker is thus entering the software biz and snapping up a big player in quality assurance. More »

Feedburner buys Blogbeat

Not that you care about one startup buying another, especially when it's already on that ubiquitous Web 2.0 blog TechCrunch, but RSS marketing network Feedburner bought blog analytic company Blogbeat. Blogbeat's homepage has a rundown of the deal. (We previously thought Feedburner bought Nooked, as posted here.) More »

Bloggers flesh out Valleywag scoop: NBC is buying Tribe.net

PaidContent blogger Rafat Ali has more details on NBC's purchase of Tribe.net (broken by Valleywag last week). Ali says the social site sold for under $50 million — not quite the $500 million-plus that News Corp paid for third-generation social site MySpace last year. More »

Exclusive: NBC is buying Tribe — but why?

Whoa, dude! Tribe, the social network preferred by Bay Area hippies and ravers, may be a damsel in distress as reported, says a tipster, but NBC is swooping down to whisk Tribe to its castle in the media sky. More »

Yahoo rejects last.fm to the tune of $40 million

Every now and then, a rumored deal actually sounds smart and strategic. Most of Yahoo's deals are like that: Yahoo's purchases of Upcoming.org, Del.icio.us, and Flickr make sense, and the only question is why the bought properties aren't already tied into the front page. More »

Remainders: Lifestyles of the rich and Dyson

• Board-member-about-town Esther Dyson reminds you — personally — how much cooler her life is than yours. [EDyson on Flickr]
• Avocent to acquire Landesk. After a $415 million deal, both will still have stupid names. [CNET]
• Productivity firm 37 Signals opens a job board for companies scouting out "designers, programmers, or executives who 'get it.'" Executives who don't "get it" may apply directly to Microsoft. [37 Signals]
• Apple can sail through the loss of any exec — except Steve. Then they're fucked. [PC Magazine]
• MediaNews Group snaps up the San Jose Mercury News, with help from Hearst. No word on whether Hearst will order the masthead to read: "Why read this when you could read Hearst's SF Chronicle?" [TODAYonline]