Google's Deals: Morning Tech Bytes
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Google's (GOOG) - Get Report much-hyped deal to buy daily deal site Grouponfell through Friday evening, when the startup reportedly walked away from the offer, which was rumored to be as big as $6 billion. Groupon, which would have provided Google with valuable insight into customers' Web buying and searching behavior in localized markets, could be mulling an IPO, reported the Chicago Breaking Business blog.
Google completed two other acquisitions late last week, buying digital rights management/streaming video firm
Widevine
and
Phonetic Arts
, which will help the search giant improve its range of speech-based services.
Google was trading up almost $5 to $577.98 in pre-market trading.
is rolling out a revamp of users' profile pages, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg explaining the changes on
60 Minutes
Sunday night. Among the updates, aimed to better highlight more useful information about users, is the display of vital stats at the top of profile pages and a stream of photos beneath it.
The Indian government is speaking with
Research In Motion's
(RIMM)
BlackBerry customers about
transmitted via the company's secure networks, according to a report from
The Wall Street Journal
. While the government had said it won't move to block service, it's worried that terrorists might be using BlackBerry devices to communicate.
RIM shares were down 40 cents to $62.25 in pre-market trading.
Rumors continue to circulate around
AOL
(AOL)
and
Yahoo!
(YHOO)
, this time with
Reuters
reporting that
of its legacy dial-up service provider network and its display advertising business. The transaction could eventually involve a merger with Yahoo!, says the report.
AOL was up 14 cents to $25.32 in pre-market trading while Yahoo was up 0.13% to $16.37.
--Written by Maggie Overfelt in New York.
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