Roundup: HP courts EDS, YouTube dominates videos, Apple signs up HBO

Venture Beat — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:51:59 -0700

Here’s the latest action:
Hewlett-Packard confirmed today that it is in advanced talks to buy EDS — It wants to acquire the data center outsourcing service company for $12 billion to $13 billion, well above the company’s current value of $9.5 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story. If the deal is consummated, HP would have a lot more legs to compete with IBM’s global services division. HP’s services division brought in $16. 6 billion of the company’s $104 billion in revenue last year. EDS had revenue of $22 billion last year, so don’t expect the new company to be call HPEDS. The big fish can swallow this one whole.

Google extends its lead in online video in March, according to new figures from comScore — People watched about 11.5 billion videos in March, with Google accounting for 38 percent of the entire tally. YouTube, in turn, accounted for 98 percent of Google’s results.

Jeff Raikes has been named CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is committed to improving health in the developing world –Raikes is retiring as the president of Microsoft’s business division and will work as a full-time philanthropist along side Bill Gates, who is also joining the foundation full-time in June. Raikes will start in September. Reporters asked on a phone call if the foundation will take on the same culture as Microsoft as a result. Will we see the Gates Foundation, which has an endowment of $37.3 billion, make a hostile takeover bid for the Ford Foundation — and then give up?

XM Satellite Radio posted a wider loss that missed Wall Street estimates. But the CEO Nate Davis said he expected that the merger with Sirius Satellite Radio will be approved in the second quarter. Clearly, running a business on its own isn’t going so well, with a loss of $129.3 million and rising costs for acquiring new subscribers.

Apple is reportedly in talks with Time Warner’s HBO division to sell popular HBO programs — They include “Entourage,” for Apple’s iTunes service. Apple may charge a higher price of $1.99 for HBO videos. This may be the first time that Apple has created a separate price structure with a content provider, signaling the importance of the HBO content. I guess it shows there is life after the Bada bing.

Virtual world mania is spreading far beyond Linden Labs’ Second Life — Knowledge Adventure, the maker of kids’ educational-game software JumpStart, will begin selling virtual-world software aimed at three-year-olds to five-year-olds. The JumpStart Advanced Preschool World will encourage kids to learn their ABCs by playing games in a 3-D version of a beach or a jungle.

Hackers managed to steal the identities of six million Chileans — This included the daughter of the country’s president. The data included identity cards numbers, addressses, phone numbers, e-mails and academic backgrounds. The data was taken early Friday from servers at the Education Ministry, as first reported by the daily newspaper El Mercurio.

Picitup launches a test version of its search engine for finding matching images — It can be used for celebrity face matching and a variety of other image related functions. It reminds me of the combination image-text search engine under research at the Palo Alto Research Center.

Advanced Micro Devices shuffles management — Randy Allen, former head of the company’s server chip business, will be the senior vice president of the computing solutions group. He replaces Mario Rivas, an apparent victim of Intel’s spectacular success against AMD. AMD has had a tough time competing because of delays in launching its Barcelona products.