• I remember when Alta Vista and Excite! were the hot search engines, my how the world has changed.  It looks like it’s narrowing down to a two horse race with Microsoft putting the moves on Yahoo! for about $44.6 billion (Notes from SearchEngineLand). I guess it’s really on now, Google versus Microsoft in a search engine death match.
• Yahoo! acquired Zimbra last year. I wonder what that means for the "Exchange killer"?


• Amazon is acquiring Audible.com the leading provider of digital spoken word content establishing itself even further as the web’s biggest superstore.


• There were already three open source transactions in January:




• MySQL bought by Sun
• Nokia Buys Trolltech


• Covalent was Acquired by SpringSource




• In preparation Andrew Aiken and the boys from the Olliance Group are ready to help along the deals with their newly formed M&A practice. 

The question now is,"Who’s next and how much?"

For more Mark Hinkle, visit his Socialized Software blog.