Maureen O'Gara

Hmm, apparently Samsung has pushed one too many of Apple's buttons. According to DigiTimes Apple has bought up half of Elpida Memory's total chip production of mobile DRAM rather than give the iPad and iPhone order to Samsung, its largest supplier, accused of ripping off its technology in courts throughout the world. Reuters said the report - citing unnamed industry sources - cost Samsung, the world's biggest DRAM factory, $10 billion worth of market cap on Wednesday. Hynix also took a hit. Elpida certainly appreciates it ‘cause market conditions have driven it into bankruptcy protection and acquisition talks with Micron Technology. If nothing else, Apple gets pricing leverage out of the deal and it's said a Micron-Elpida tie-up could threaten South Korean memory chip hegemony. ... (more)

Java Jury Deliberating Google’s Patent Infringement

Oracle’s Java patent infringement case against Google and Android went to the jury Tuesday afternoon. The jury, which delivered only a partial verdict on copyright infringement last week, deciding that Google infringed but unable to say whether that infringement made “fair use” of the IP, is now down to 11 jurors. One juror reportedly called in from the San Francisco Bay Bridge with car trouble, unlikely to make court at all. The judge excused her from ever coming back, ZDnet said, and pushed on. Only two patents are at issue. In its closing statement Oracle accused Google of be... (more)

Facebook Tickles Its IPO Again

Facebook Wednesday upped the number of shares that will be sold when it IPOs Friday by almost 25% or 84 million shares to about 421.2 million shares of Class A common stock. The overallotment has also been increased from 50.6 million to 63.2 million. If all 484.4 million shares move, it'd estimated $18.4 billion could change hands, up from $14.7 billion. The added shares will be coming from early investors. The move, which gains Facebook nothing, will also cut CEO Mark Zuckerberg's dominant voting power from 57.3% to around 55.8%. Pricing remains, at least for the moment, at bet... (more)

Qualtrics Raises $70 Million

Called "the biggest software company you haven't heard of yet" by one of its shiny new backers, 10-year-old Qualtrics has gotten $70 million from Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital in the VCs' largest joint investment ever. It's also the company's first outside investment. Reportedly profitable since it started, it's supposed to use the money to expand its SaaS products beyond market research and accelerate its global growth, expecting to hire another 250 employees to add to the existing 200 in the next year. Qualtrics is used for online data collection and analysis claiming to ... (more)

GM to Pull Facebook Advertising: WSJ

Here we are less than three days before Facebook's historic $100 billion IPO and General Motors or "people familiar with the matter" let slip to the Wall Street Journal that GM's going to stop advertising on the social networking site because the paid ads are ineffective. The big American carmaker still reportedly intends to do marketing through Facebook but that's not going to put any money in Facebook's pocketbook. The paper says GM started having doubts earlier this year and met with Facebook managers, leaving the meetings "unconvinced advertising on the web site made sense." ... (more)