ziomal.biz

European regulators cleared Nokia's takeover of U.S. digital mapmaker Navteq on Wednesday, saying the deal would be unlikely to shut off rivals' access to digital maps. Navteq is one of only two international producers of digital maps. The other one, Tele Atlas, was recently bought by navigation device producer TomTom. The European Commission said there were concerns that the strong position held by Nokia as a supplier of mobile phones might allow the combined company to block rivals' access to maps they need to offer navigation services.

Seeking to reassure investors -- many of whom were still stinging from Yahoo's decision to walk away from a multibillion-dollar merger with Microsoft -- CEO Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock sent a letter making their case for hooking up with Google instead of inking an ad deal with Redmond. The letter argues that the Google partnership strikes the right strategic balance and gives the company more flexibility than Microsoft's proposal to acquire Yahoo's search business.

The battle between Yahoo and investor Carl Icahn heated up a few notches this week. After exchanging a few sharply worded letters with each other, they started writing to investors. The humanity! Though the two parties have been going back and forth for weeks, both have really been trying to make their cases to investors, obviously. Icahn has been pressing his complaint that Yahoo was foolish not to sell to Microsoft when it had the chance, while Yahoo has been insisting it can do just fine on its own, thanks.

Selling Facebook to Microsoft would not be the best way to fulfill its mission of enabling people to connect with one another, said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the social network. During the D6: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif., Zuckerberg was asked whether he would consider selling if Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer offered $15 billion for the network. That is roughly the price that the entire network would be valued at based on the $240 million Microsoft paid last year for an ownership stake of less than 2 percent.

AOL has closed its $850 million acquisition of Bebo, and the portal will use the social network as the basis for a new People Networks business unit. Bebo Chief Executive Officer Joanna Shields will serve as executive vice president of AOL and president of the People Networks division, which will combine Bebo and AOL's two chat platforms -- AIM and ICQ. All told, the platforms will reach 80 million users worldwide, AOL said. AOL is positioned to "capitalize on the exploding social media space," said AOL CEO Randy Falco.

Video game publisher Electronic Arts has for a third time extended the deadline for its $2 billion tender offer to buy smaller rival Take-Two Interactive Software, but it did not raise the price as many analysts had expected. Take-Two, meanwhile, confirmed it is in formal talks with an interested party -- most likely EA -- even as it again spurned the offer price as too low. Redwood City, Calif.-based EA said Monday it is extending the offer, which had expired Friday, to June 16 at 11:59 p.m. EDT.

Comcast is buying contact management company Plaxo and plans to incorporate into all its offerings features intended to help people synchronize their address books and connect socially online. The Philadelphia-based cable company said social networking and other services will be added to its Comcast.net, Fancast.com and Fandango.com Web sites. Cable subscribers eventually will also be able to access the services through their set-top boxes and other devices.

The long list of companies Microsoft might acquire post-Microhoo includes such outré possibilities as Netflix, Cisco and Salesforce.com. Facebook is also on that list -- but its potential as a Microsoft acquisition target is beginning to look less unlikely. In fact, it's looking downright plausible. Rumor has it Microsoft has already approached the social networking site about a possible sale. Clearly, Microsoft likes the company; it already owns a piece of it, having acquired a 1.6 percent stake for $240 million last year.

A few days after the seeming culmination of its failed bid to acquire Yahoo for $47.5 billion, Microsoft appears to be contemplating an entirely new Web 2.0 strategy: a partner-free, organic approach to besting Google. The news was delivered by none other than Chairman Bill Gates: "Now at this point, Microsoft is focused on its independent strategy." Whether this is the definitive last word on the matter is debatable. On Tuesday, Gates said that the company would not rule out partnerships, and on Wednesday, reports surfaced that Redmond was sending out feelers to Facebook.

The collapse of this weekend's negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo looked like game over. When the news first broke that Microsoft was walking away from its $44 billion bid, it seemed as though Redmond was the loser: It had tried a high-stakes, high-profile acquisition gambit and failed. Its defeat may have seemed the result of poor strategizing. It may have seemed that CEO Steve Ballmer just didn't have enough moxie to pull off a win.