NI-Limits Blog

In our first article dedicated to Facebook, Mashable reports on a recent server-upgrade that cost them US$100 Million without spending anything:

According to Business Week, the social network has closed a deal to take a $100 million loan (“venture lending”), all of which will be spent on new servers. Facebook gives up no equity as part of the deal. Essentially, it’s a really, really huge credit card, with very favorable terms. In all, Facebook has now raised in excess of $300 million, including $240 million from Microsoft, $100 million from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, and an undisclosed amount from the Samwer brothers.

Inquisitr (the new blog from TechCrunch’s Duncan Riley) reports on a rumor that co-founder and CTO of Facebook, Adam D’Angelo is leaving…

The reasons behind D’Angelo’s departure have so far not been disclosed, but it’s a strange move given D’Angelo’s supposed close relationship with Mark Zuckerberg; D’Angelo has been often cited as Zuckerberg’s best friend. It’s also a rare employee move away from Facebook at a time the social networking giant is attracting the cream of Valley talent.

As CTO at Facebook, D’Angelo oversaw the Platform Development team, the Data team and new product design and architecture. As well as holding a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Caltech, D’Angelo was named one of the top 24 finalists in the international Topcoder Collegiate Challenge in 2005, which competition which tests the ability to design and implement complex algorithms in a timed environment.

Duncan also reported on another potential rumour that Microsoft may be looking to buy Facebook and save face over the Yahoo deal:

A report just released by the Wall Street Journal claims the company’s bankers have been in touch with the social networking site to “gauge [its] willingness to sell.” The Journal cites the also Dow Jones-owned All Things Digital blog for first breaking the news early this morning. It does note, however, that there are no “active discussions” going on as of yet.

Microsoft already has hundreds of millions invested in Facebook. It bought a 1.6 percent stake in the company last fall. But how serious the idea of an actual acquisition could be is yet to be seen. Just today in Tokyo, Bill Gates said his company won’t go after any other takeovers following its failed talks with Yahoo. Microsoft dropped its discussions to buy the search engine over the weekend after failing to agree on a price.

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Highlights Reagarding The Search Giants (Google, Yahoo and Microsoft)

Microsoft drops Yahoo bid, losses Xobni & buys Farecast (at US$115M)

Getting straight into our most recent Microsoft Update by updating you on their bid to acquire Yahoo, we decided to clock-quote Inside Microsoft:

Microsoft announced tonight it will not be going forward with its plan to buy Yahoo, after it was clear the two sides could not agree on a price, and Steve Ballmer elected not to risk his entire career on the deal. Here’s Microsoft’s press release announcing the decision. It’s clear that Microsoft raised its offer to $33 (effectively adding $4 to the deal, based on stock value, or $5 billion, and Yahoo wanted another $4, a total of $10 billion over the original offer, which Microsoft believed was unworkable.

Here’s Yahoo’s press release in response. They don’t seem at all dissapointed. Here’s Steve’s letter to Microsoft employees.

Additionally, TechCrunch reports that Xobni also turned them down:

After negotiating over the past few weeks with Microsoft and signing a letter of intent to be acquired, e-mail startup Xobni has walked from the deal, according to a source close to the negotiations. The deal would have been a natural for Microsoft, which was offering to buy the two-year old startup for somewhere in the $20-million range. (The company has raised less than $5 million so far in venture capital from Khosla Ventures, Atomico, First Round Capital, Ron Conway, and Y Combinator).

But the deeper that Xobni got into the discussions, the less comfortable it felt about its eventual fate inside the Microsoft machine. The fear was that Xobni would end up nothing more than a feature of Outlook. Microsoft wanted the entire team to move up to Redmond, and was vague in its answers about what it had planned for that team, or the product. In the end, the body language just wasn’t there.

However, Microsoft do score a victory with the purchase of Farecast for US$ 115 Million (as reported by TechCrunch):

Rumors about the acquisition of Farecast are accurate - in a very brief blog post CEO Hugh Crean says they’ve been acquired by Microsoft. SeattlePI, which first broke the rumor last week, says the price tag was $115 million. While the two companies are an understandable fit given their proximity and partnership over MSN Travel, SeattlePI reports that Farecast entertained multiple offers before accepting Microsoft’s.\

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Highlights Reagarding The Search Giants (Google, Yahoo and Microsoft)

Our 1st Dedicated Facebook Article (with a hint of Microsoft)

Knowing it’s been quite sometime since we discussed the Search Giants (Google, Yahoo and Microsoft), we figured it best to keep you posted on all three within a single culminated update covering the months past since Microsoft made their unsolicited bid for Yahoo.

The first thing we noticed was that Microsoft did not only bid for Yahoo, because on March the 7th, TechCrunch reported on a bidding war that started with Google over the popular Digg platform:

Digg is prepared to take less than the $300 million Allen & Co. were floating late last year. Google, our source says, will likely bid $200-$225 million, which Digg would likely accept.

Microsoft is looking at a somewhat lower price. That makes sense, since most of Digg’s revenue today comes from a three year advertising deal that Digg signed with Microsoft last year. That deal has revenue guarantees - and Microsoft may be hesitant to value Digg based on revenue that they supply.

Any sale is likely to give Microsoft an option to terminate that advertising deal, which means Google isn’t valuing Digg based on revenue, either. But it is a big slap in the face to Microsoft to steal Digg away, and Google can certainly generate revenue on all those page views.

Despite rumours of packing it in, Yahoo made several interest new developments over the last few months, with Search Monkey being the most important of those and one that certainly brings a bright shinning light to the end of a very, very long tunnel (as reported by TechCrunch):

Yahoo will soon be allowing third parties to enhance the Yahoo Search experience. The new platform, codenamed “SearchMonkey” and officially called Open Search Platform, will consist of a set of APIs that allow third parties to modify search results on Yahoo by adding images, structured data and additional deep links.

The altered results can contain far more information than the current link and a bit of text from the website. For example, Yelp (a user generated local business review site), one of the launch partners, will include a photo, review information and the address and phone number of the business.

As if one could not do something without the other following-suite, TechCrunch also reported on Microsoft’s step forward into the world of OpenSource freedom:

Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols. These developers will be able to use the documentation for free to develop products. Companies that engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, as will enterprises that obtain these implementations from a distributor that does not have such a patent license.

While Microsoft is not open-sourcing its own software, it is taking dramatic steps to play nice with the open-source community. This is a complete 180-degree turn from its stance of the past. The broad set of interoperability principles it is announcing today will apply to the following products (including future versions): Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007.

The four principles it is declaring are:

(1) ensuring open connections
(2) promoting data portability
(3) enhancing support for industry standards
(4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.

It will release documentation for all APIs of the products above, will lay out how it supports industry standards, will create new APIs for Microsoft Office to make it easier for developers to create plug-ins for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and will launch an Open Source Interoperability Initiative to promote interoperability between open-source and Microsoft products.

Not forgetting Google amongst these developments, recent news from Mashable reminded us about their on-going bid to buy the spectrum waves of America several years ago (or so it seemed), which just now appears to have come to an end:

By their own admission, they were aware that the chances of them actually winning the bid were slim, but they had to push it to $4.6 billion, since this price would “trigger the important “open applications” and “open handsets” license conditions.”

To do this, they had to use every trick in the poker book: they were “prepared to gain the nationwide C Block licenses at a price somewhat higher than the reserve price,” and they raised their own bid even though no one was bidding against them “to ensure aggressive bidding on the C Block.” Well played, G.

If Google were willing to bluff their way through a bidding war over spectral fields of invisible light, it has to make one wonder what they would be willing to do in other situations yet to arise…

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