Who Bought who this week? HP, EDS, CBS, CNet

Posted on: May 16, 2008

A lot of tech companies traded like a high stakes poker game. Of course this is not unusal for companies to buy other companies - It is interesting to see who bought what. It makes for the big question: Will the new parent company keep their new child or will we see it in a dumpster next week?

Let’s start with the big one: HP buys EDS. On Tuesday, HP laid down 12.6 Billion to purchase Electronic Data Systems. This is a move to catapult HP into a position to compete with IBM’s markets.

Created in 1962 by Ross Perot - the Billionaire that ran for President in 1992 (and took about 18.9 percent of the vote). Ross Started EDS after departing from IBM. His first big contract was in computerizing Medicare Records from the Government. In 1968 EDS went public and shares went from $16 to $160.

General Motors purchased EDS in 1984 for 2.4 Billion. It grew to over 137 thousand employees in 65 countries. GM split the company into it’s own entity. EDS had more than just General Motors under it’s belt. Government agencies, Millitary Clients in many countries, Bank of America are a few of the clients.

EDS under HP’s belt will give HP the advantage to get into these companies and sell wares as well as outsourced applications. It should be a great partnership, especially since HP has ramped up it’s systems as of late. And HP is no stranger to acquisition. They have bought many a company, including the most notable Compaq back in 2002.

CBS buys CNet It’s not 12.6 Billion, but it’s still more than what I have in my bank account as CBS grabbed up CNet for 1.75 Billion.

CBS has been around since 1927 as a Radio Network and 1939 as a Television Network. CBS stands for “Columbia Broadcasting System”. They have been in the record industry, film production, home video production and even in the Electronics market as they made games for the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision.

CBS was acquired itself by Westinghouse in 1995 for 5.4 Billion. Then in was acquired by Viacom for 37 Billion - a company that produced syndicated CBS material.

CNEt Networks founded in 1993. It was aired on the USA Network and discussed Computers and Technology. CNet nabbed ZDNet in 2000 for 1.6 Billion. It also owns Webshots and TechRepublic.

This merger should put CBS in a great position not only on Television Media, but also in Computer and Print media. CNet has offered News and Reviews on their website as well as popular downloads and it’s own CNet TV.

Wired (CondeNet) Buys Ars Technica Still not what is in my bank account: $25 Million dollars was the price for Ars Technica to Wired.

Wired has been around since 1993 as a print and online media resource. It survived the Dot Com Crash and grew back from there. Ars Technica has been around since 1998 and mainly contained News and Features. The two joining should bring Wired to a new level of expertise.

To show that acquisition is an everyday occurrence, here are a couple other tech companies that were bought out this month:

Cablevision buys Newsday An American Cable Television company, it was founded in 1973 and is the 5^th largest cable provider in the US. Newsday is a Pulitzer Prize winning paper in the New York area. It was founded in 1940.

Iron Mountain Buys DocuVault Iron Mountain is a Storage facility in Pennsylvania. The company has been around since 1950. DocuVault takes care of Secure records and document management.

Also, Yahoo bought ‘Inquisitor’, Vodafone acquires ZYB - a contact management service and Ask.com buys Lexico Publishing group. All of these purchases happened in the last week.

In reality, companies purchase others to either increase their sales or make their company look better to sell. Bigger and better is where we always want to go. Sometimes we get some great companies out of it, other times we see a lifetime of work go down the drain.

Just like poker - you got to know when to hold em, know when to fold. Most importantly, you got to always be looking for that “perfect hand”. Then you can bet it all.