Yellow Pages Group New Zealand has acquired a majority stake in grownups.co.nz, a Web site targeting the over 50s crowd, as reported on Stuff.co.nz. Voted as New Zealand’s best lifestyle Web site in 2008, this acquisition may well prove…
With the recent acquisition of Get It Pages in Saskatchewan, Yellow Pages Group in Canada has now consolidated a national footprint in Canada. According to the New Brunswick Business Journal, Get It Pages publishes directories in the regions of…
There has not been all that much fresh coverage of the rumor, reported earlier this week, that Microsoft may acquire Yell Group, the U.K.-based international publisher with operations in the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain and Latin America. We have…
CNET is reporting the rumor that MenuPages could be close to acquisition by an unnamed suitor. If past partnerships are any indication, it could be IAC/Citysearch. Or perhaps Yelp? Keep an eye out.
Thomson Directories owner Seat Pagine Gialle has put the U.K. directory publishing group up for sale, according to an article in the Times Online. According to the article: “Thomson, which has been hit by competition from the web and reduced…
Steve Ballmer has officially walked away from what would have been the biggest tech deal ever, citing that Yahoo!'s price was too high. Coverage from the Merc.
Norwegian-owned Interinfo was purchased by BaltCap, the leading private equity investor in the Baltic states. Interinfo represented the last directory holding of Texas Pacific Group, previous owners of Norway’s Findexa, now owned by Eniro. Terms of the deal were not…
Spot Runner has gone into the local reseller channel in a major way by acquiring Weblistic, a company headed by Ketan Shah (and whose president is Yellow Pages Commando Dick Larkin). The company has 50 employees and is headquartered in…
Yellow Pages Group in Canada made another small step toward complete coverage of the Canadian directory market by acquiring the directory business from TBayTel, a leading telecommunications company in Thunder Bay and Northern Ontario. This means YPG will now be…
Amid all the noise about Microsoft and Yahoo!, one of the unanswered questions has to do with MS’ intent toward the recruitment business -- a business that actually has some relationship with Microsoft’s core enterprise solutions (as opposed to its less…
Local Insight Regatta Holdings and AT&T announced the acquisition of L.M. Berry's Independent Line of Business unit. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. According to the press release: The transaction will combine two industry-leading organizations responsible for selling, producing…
Today’s big news is Microsoft's unsolicited takeover bid for Yahoo!. The $44.6 billion bid represents a 62 percent premium on Yahoo!'s closing stock price yesterday, which was affected by Yahoo!’s depressing earnings announcement, in which Yahoo! said it would lay…
GetVendors.com, a California-oriented start-up profiled here last August, has been acquired by Matchpoint, a 30-person service, backed by Oak Investments and IdeaLab and incubated by a team of largely LookSmart veterans. Matchpoint got started a year ago and launched in…
FAST Search and Transfer, whose “enterprise search” makes every element of an organization searchable, is being sold to Microsoft for $1.2 billion after the Oslo-based company severely missed sales goals and was forced last year to lay off a large…
One of the quietest but apparently most successful producers in the local search space has been GeoSign, owned by webpreneur Tim Nye. The Canadian company has incubated TrueLocal, which aggregates local online databases, and is also invested in mobile directory…
In news that was supposed to be announced today but broke late last night, discount travel site Kayak has raised $196 million and acquired competitor SideStep. Techcrunch reports that deal is worth $200 million. The funding came from existing investors…
has bet heavily on building a voice search platform for telecom carriers, Yellow Pages publishers and other providers of ad-supported directory assistance. Now the 150-person company, partially owned by YPG and just listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, has enhanced…
European Directories and Truvo announced the possibility of a merger of their respective De Telefoongids and Gouden Gids directory operations in the Netherlands. According to the news release: Cornel Riklin, CEO of European Directories, said “We are very excited about…
It is hard for me to comprehend, but we are finally finished with ILM:07. We were grateful to have had 650 interesting and enthusiastic attendees from all over the world, 72 stimulating speakers, a full load of sponsors and an…
At the ILM:07 conference last week in L.A., we saw lots of great mapping demos from Google, mobilePeople, et al. But it was hard to nail down how maps and their related services (ZIP codes, neighborhood mapping and other spatial…
