News

• Sprint sues Dish, Clearwire over takeover plan

  Sprint Nextel sued Clearwire and Dish Network on Monday in a bid to block Dish from taking over Clearwire, Sprint's majority-owned network partner.

• Siemens looking to unload share in networking venture with Nokia, report said

  Siemens has started talks with private-equity firms about the sale of its share in Nokia Siemens Networks, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

• Yahoo moves to bolster Flickr on phones, acquires photo app developer

  Yahoo moved to strengthen the mobile portion of its revamped Flickr photo sharing service, acquiring the developer behind a popular photo editing app.

• Clearwire's board backs Dish offer, dealing blow to Sprint

  Clearwire's board of directors has unanimously recommended its shareholders reject the takeover bid by Sprint Nextel, which owns roughly half of Clearwire, and instead accept a buyout offer from Dish Network.

• Group wants antitrust agencies to block Google's Waze deal

  U.S. antitrust agencies should block Google's proposed acquisition of crowdsourced mapping app Waze because the deal would take away Google's major competitor in mobile maps, consumer group Consumer Watchdog said.

• It's official: Google buys Waze with an eye toward enhancing Maps

  Google is buying the crowdsourced mapping app developer Waze, in a move geared toward adding more real-time navigation tools to its own Maps software, the company announced Tuesday.

• Marketo rolls out customer engagement tools as Salesforce.com threat looms

  Marketo says it has created tools that put it far ahead of rival marketing automation software vendors by making it much easier to run targeted campaigns, and more effective ones to boot.

• Tibco Software acquires event processing specialist StreamBase Systems

  Tibco Software has added streaming capabilities to its event-processing portfolio with the acquisition of StreamBase Systems.

• SoftBank hikes bid for Sprint to $21.6 billion

  SoftBank has sweetened its bid for Sprint Nextel, increasing its total offer to about US$21.6 billion and boosting the amount of cash Sprint shareholders would get.

• Waze could drive better social tools at Google, experts say

  Waze's crowdsourced traffic and navigation app is attractive to Google, which is said to be a serious suitor for the app, because of the wealth of mapping data it offers. But Waze's biggest draw may be social, some experts say.

• DOJ clears Softbank's acquisition of Sprint Nextel

  The U.S. Department of Justice said Friday it has no objection to Softbank acquiring Sprint Nextel, a decision that clears the way for the Federal Communications Commission to rule on the deal.

• Japan's Rakuten continues Amazon pursuit, will buy US logistics firm

  Rakuten, Japan's largest online retailer, is acquiring a U.S. logistics firm as it continues to build out its infrastructure to compete with foreign rivals like Amazon.com.

• SAP buys e-commerce vendor Hybris in strike back at Oracle, Salesforce.com

  SAP is buying privately held Hybris in a bid to build out an e-commerce software offering that connects with customers across multiple "channels, devices and touch points."

• Think cloud is no big deal? IBM and Salesforce.com just spent a combined $4.5 billion on it

  It's raining money from the clouds as Salesforce.com and IBM this week together spent a total of $4.5 billion to boost their cloud computing services.

• IBM buys SoftLayer as part of public cloud push

  IBM has signed an agreement to acquire SoftLayer Technologies, as it looks to accelerate the build-out of its public cloud infrastructure. The company is also forming a services division to back up the push.