Acquisitions

IBM is the granddaddy in computing. Some might even call it the last surviving dinosaur. It has more or less survived lately on the server business but the rise of the cloud and cloud providers has seen its name overshadowed and almost forgotten. Now it’s adopting a strategy that may make it more enticing for those who want to move to the cloud without being locked in. The company has just announced a bid to acquire a fellow granddaddy, this time in the Linux space: Red Hat.

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Back in June, Microsoft announced its intention to purchase GitHub. The monolithic company revealed that it would pay an impressive $7.5 billion in stock to add GitHub to its portfolio, making this one expensive deal. Today, we're getting word that the acquisition is complete, having gone through all the necessary regulatory channels to gain approval from the world's various governments.

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It would appear as though Apple acquired a company by the name of Spektral at the tail end of the year 2017. This Danish group specialized in the isolation of objects in both still and moving images (and video), removing background elements from said objects in real time. This company previously aimed to create cloud-based applications and a Photoshop plugin - now it's inside Apple proper.

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It isn't exactly a secret that SiriusXM has lost a bit of its luster with the rise of inexpensive music streaming services, but as the old saying goes, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." SiriusXM has announced its intention to buy Pandora, which is one of the most popular music streaming services around. The proposed acquisition is valued at $3.5 billion, and the resulting company would be one of the largest music streaming businesses around.

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It's been a very long time since we've heard the name Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. The RPG was supposed to kick off an epic series that included an MMO, but developer 38 Studios shut down shortly after Reckoning released. Ever since then, the Kingdoms of Amalur series has sat dormant, with no indication that we'll ever see it revived.

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It’s really no secret that Apple, or at least CEO Tim Cook, believes in augmented reality, at least more than virtual reality. It does, after all, have ARCore but nothing equivalent for VR. But like its self-driving car, the company has been unsurprisingly mum about its plans to make and sell an AR product of its own. Actions, however, speak louder than words and buying a startup that focuses on AR lenses is pretty much the smoking gun we could be looking for.

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Years before Apple came out with the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil, very few companies dared to oppose what the late Steve Jobs said about styluses, that nobody would want them. In 2012, a startup named FiftyThree launched not only an award-winning Paper sketchbook app exclusively for the iPad then nascent but also a popular Pencil stylus. Now six years later, the company is no more, having been acquired by someone you least expected: cloud-based file transfer company WeTransfer.

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Qualcomm just can’t seem to catch a break these days and continues to find itself at the center of controversy. Its biggest headache right now is its fight with Apple over patents and royalties. But it may now be feeling the repercussions of challenging what is also one of its biggest customers. Qualcomm has practically and publicly admitted that Apple’s upcoming iPhones won’t be using its LTE modems. Instead, they will be using Intel’s, which Qualcomm has just recently mocked using Ookla’s Speedtest as evidence.

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Ridesharing company Lyft has announced the acquisition of Motivate, a massive bikeshare operator with systems throughout the nation. Motivate is the largest company of its kind in North America, one that is joining the Lyft system to help usher in Lyft Bikes, an expansion of Lyft's services. Among other things, Lyft is acquiring Motivate's city contracts.

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It’s the inevitable conclusion to an acquisition years in the making, especially after a US court gave its thumbs up. AT&T has just proudly announced that it has, at long last, completed its acquisition of Time Warner. This practically puts one of the US’ biggest entertainment companies into the hands of one of the country’s biggest telecom companies, creating a media giant that AT&T’s rivals will have a hard time toppling.

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There are a lot of podcast apps vying for your download out there, and for years, Pocket Casts has been considered by many to be one of the best. There's some big news for Pocket Casts users today, as the app has been jointly acquired by some big names in public radio. NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago, and This American Life have all partnered to purchase the app for an undisclosed amount.

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While it pales in popularity compared to the big social networks, photo-sharing site Flickr is still around. Founded in 2004 and purchased by Yahoo in 2005 for over $20 million, Flickr grew to roughly 75 million accounts, but has long been overtaken by social media giants like Facebook and Instagram. But now Flickr has a new owner, the professional photo hosting service SmugMug, and it promises to do what's best for the site and its users.

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