Business

V3.co.uk: Microsoft is a whisker away from an $8bn deal to buy VoIP firm Skype in its biggest ever foray into the acquisition market, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The deal, which would total around $8.5bn when including Skype’s long-term debt, could be signed as early as Tuesday, people familiar with the matter told the paper. Microsoft’s biggest acquisition to date is the $6bn paid in 2007 to buy online advertising firm aQuantive. ...

TheNextWeb wrote: We’ve received a solid report from a reliable and proven source that Yahoo has sold social bookmarking site Delicious for $5m+. The service was placed on the market in December after a meeting to discuss Yahoo’s future direction. After a heated bidding process, the site has reportedly been sold to a rival bookmarking service – who exactly we’re unsure of but we’ll update once we have confirmation. We do know its been sold to an existing competitor with “strong user base.” ...

Mashable wrote: Google has broken new ground in the personal finance realm with the purchase of UK price comparison website BeatThatQuote for $61.5 million ($37.7 million GBP). BeatThatQuote, launched in 2005, provides price comparisons for UK loans, insurance, legal services, utilities and other financial products. It was named one of the UK’s fastest-growing websites by Nielsen in 2007. “Our team is excited about becoming a part of Google,” BeatThatQuote Managing Director John Paleomylites said in a statement on the company’s website. “We look forward to working with their engineers to create new tools making it easier for consumers to choose the right financial products. We think we can offer more transparency and better pricing information than existing online offerings.” ...

Internet giant buys into security. Internet giant Google has acquired software analytics firm Zynamics, it was announced yesterday. The German company, which was founded in 2004 by CEO Thomas Dullien (aka Halvar Flake) to research the automation of reverse engineering and code analysis, now produces four reverse-engineering tools:BinDiff, VxClass, BinNavi and BinCrowd, which are widely used by researchers in the security community. Google has not provided any clues as to how it plans to make use of the Zynamics technology, other than to bolster the protection offered to Google users. Details of the acquisition were not revealed. ...

New York, December 27th (TradersHuddle.com) – Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) are trading very close to calculated support at $45.27 with current price action closing at just $46.51 places the stock price near levels where traders will start paying attention. Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) develops and provides open source software and services, including the Red Hat Linux operating system. Red Hat’s current stock range is defined by current calculated support defined at $45.27 and by the resistance level at $48.78, which should be used by traders planning their trades. ...

Mashable: Windows Phone 7 has been on the market for a little more than a month, but the company still isn’t disclosing how many devices featuring its revamped mobile OS have been sold. Pressed on the issue by The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg at All Things Digital’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference on Tuesday, Microsoft Corporate VP for Windows Phone Joe Belfiore would say only that “It’s just too soon to talk about numbers,” though he admitted it will likely take years before Microsoft is near the top of the mobile market share discussion. ...

Google announced on Friday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Widevine, a Seattle-based company that has focused on DRM and security for streaming internet media for the last decade. “The Widevine team has worked to provide a better video delivery experience for businesses of all kinds: from the studios that create your favorite shows and movies, to the cable systems and channels that broadcast them online and on TV, to the hardware manufacturers that let you watch that content on a variety of devices,” said Mario Queiroz, Google Vice President of Product Management. ...

Google has given all of its employees $1,000 cash “holiday bonuses” and 2011 salary increases of at least 10%, a loyal reader tells us. The 10% company-wide raise will take effect on January 1, 2011. In addition, Google will also give each employee an additional raise equivalent to 1X the employee’s target bonus for the year. And employees will be eligible for additional “merit increases” based on their individual performance. ...

Just 5 years after founding Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is worth more than Apple’s iconic chief Steve Jobs. This year, Zuckerberg, 26, added $4.9 billion to his fortune–vaulting to #35 on the Forbes 400 with an estimated fortune of $6.9 billion. Why the jump? Recent private equity investments in Facebook valued the firm at around $23 billion–more than triple its 2009 value of $7 billion. Illiquid private shares in secondary markets point to an even richer valuation. ...

Mashable: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has sold 12% of his stake in the tech giant in a transaction worth over $1.3 billion. According to a filing with the SEC, Ballmer has sold 49.3 million Microsoft shares over the last three days, bringing his total ownership to 358.9 million shares, or approximately 4.2% of the company. Essentially, he sold 12% of his shares at a price between $26 and $28. ...