Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Yahoo Buys Zimbra for $350 Million

Yahoo is set to make yet another acquisition–this time of white-label open-source email provider Zimbra. Sources close to the deal said that the Internet portal will pay $350 million, considerably upward of its most recent valuation, for the email and calendar provider.

zimbra_logo

Backed by Benchmark Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Accel Partners, San Mateo, Calif.-based Zimbra’s clients include Comcast, many ISPs and a number of colleges. The Wall Street Journal’s Robert A. Guth wrote about the company last year.

In a post by Om Malik on his GigaOm blog, he noted: “The Zimbra-built email client marries the email and calendaring applications with visual voicemail, and eventually will tie into other Comcast triple-play services.”

Yahoo’s been on a bit of an acquistion roll of late, grabbing behavioral ad network BlueLithium for $300 million earlier this month and news aggregator BuzzTracker last week for $5 million.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang continues on his 100-day march–and now seems to be making a number of interesting moves.

The acquisition was within Yahoo Senior Vice President Brad “Peanut Butter Manifesto” Garlinghouse’s unit.

Yahoo is briefing reporters today on the deal, but left BoomTown off the list. Big mistake, as it just makes us cranky and bored!

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”