“We believe that Hewlett Packard could emerge as a buyer for Sybase. Sybase’s core offerings revolve around data, analytics and mobile, three critical holes in HP’s current software strategy,” Goldmacher wrote in a note to clients today.

“HP has $12.4B (incl Palm) in cash on the balance sheet and the deal is $0.03 accretive to earnings at a 10 percent premium to SAP’s purchase price of $65,” the analyst explained. “If HP doesn’t buy Sybase, it loses its last chance to be a relevant standalone competitor in data management and risks falling further behind enterprise data management titans Oracle and IBM.”

Evidently Goldmacher doesn’t put much stock in HP’s three-year cloud-computing alliance with Microsoft (MSFT) as an enterprise data play. An acquisition of Sybase, though–well that’s a different story. That would go a long way toward making HP a data management contender and, thanks to its recent acquisition of Palm, a leading mobile enterprise company. Here’s Goldmacher again:

We love the Palm acquisition because it enables HP to create a mobile platform that is not just Windows on yet another form factor. The ability to leverage the Sybase Unwired Platform on its own hardware and OS as well as any and all third party platforms immediately makes HP a massive competitor in the mobile space. We believe that having an open hardware and software solution will catalyze the arrival of broad-based enterprise mobile apps by offering customers an enterprise class, platform agnostic, standards-based solution.

The companies haven’t disclosed a purchase price, but a person familiar with the transaction said it was a cash deal in the “low- to mid-seven figures.” I assume, but don’t know, that there’s an earn-out clause as part of the deal.

Last month, Break announced plans to start developing its own lightweight Web games, following a path blazed by the likes of Zynga and Playfish, a unit of Electronic Arts (ERTS). FileFront comes at gaming from a different perspective–like News Corp.’s (NWS) IGN and CBS’s (CBS) GameSpot, it is heavy on videos, reviews, and guides, etc., to big-budget videogames, typically played on Sony’s (SNE) PS3 or Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 consoles.

From the Nexus One Terms of Sale:

You agree to pay Google an equipment subsidy recovery fee (the “Equipment Recovery Fee”) equal to the difference between the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device if you cancel your wireless plan prior to 120 days of continuous wireless service. For example, if the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan was $529 USD and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device was $179 USD with a service plan, the Equipment Recovery Fee you pay will be $350 USD in the event you cancel within the first 120 days of carrier service….

You agree that the Equipment Recovery Fee is not a penalty but is for liquidated damages Google will incur as a result of such cancellation. These damages may include, but are not limited to, loss of compensation and administrative costs associated with such cancellation or changing of wireless service provider(s), market changes, and changes in ownership. Please note that the Equipment Recovery Fee is imposed by Google and not your chosen carrier and is in addition to any early termination fees that may be charged by your chosen carrier [emphasis added] in connection with termination of your wireless plan prior to fulfillment of your chosen carrier’s service agreement term.

The costs of canceling a T-Mobile Nexus One contract within the first four months after purchase, then, are as follows:

• $179 USD, the purchase price of the device.
• $200 USD, the early-termination fee T-Mobile assesses for contracts canceled with more than 180 days remaining on term
• $350 USD, Google’s equipment recovery fee

Grand total: USD $729.

That’s $200 more than the cost of the device unsubsidized.

So if you’re unhappy with the Nexus One you purchased on contract, do yourself a favor and wait at least four months before terminating it.

What was it that Google VP of Engineering Andy Rubin said last week? Something about making the cellphone purchasing process simple and worry-free? If that really is the goal here, implementing ETFs that make canceling a Nexus One contract more expensive than the price of the unsubsidized device itself hardly seems a good way of going about it.

I’ve asked Google (GOOG) to explain the rationale behind its $350 equipment recovery fee and will update here if I’m given one.

UPDATE: This just in from Google:

Google provides a subsidy for devices purchased with T-Mobile USA service. If a consumer cancels service after 14 days, Google recoups this subsidy in the form of an equipment recovery fee. After 120 days, the equipment recovery fee will no longer apply. This is standard practice for third party resellers of T-Mobile and other operators, and you will find similar policies for other mobile service resellers.

The T-Mobile early termination fee is separate and handled by T-Mobile.

Financial terms, first reported by The Deal, were not disclosed. That said, when rumors of the acquisition began circulating in October, the purchase price was said to be $60 million.

Writing in a company blog post, Microsoft corporate VP Brad Anderson said Opalis is an essential piece of Redmond’s “dynamic data center initiative.”

“This deal brings together the deep datacenter automation expertise of Opalis with the integrated physical and virtualized datacenter management capabilities of Microsoft System Center. I believe Opalis’ software together with the System Center suite will improve the efficiency of IT staff and operations, and customers will gain greater process consistency. Opalis’ software captures the IT processes, in a documented and repeatable way, which can be run over and over again. These capabilities will be added to Microsoft System Center to help customers automate complex IT processes, increase cost savings and shorten timeframes for IT service delivery across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.”

In case you don’t remember, Friendster was once the buzziest of start-ups. And in 2003, when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was still in high school and Twitter’s Evan Williams was still working on Blogger, the company turned down a $30 million offer from Google (GOOG).

That deal would be well worth more than $1 billion today. But reports peg MOL’s purchase price at about $100 million.

Today, Friendster’s primary role is that of a cautionary tale for Webby start-ups: Look what happens if you miss your window. “I don’t want to be another Friendster” is a well-worn cliché that still has resonance, and I heard it just the other week while sitting in the office of an Internet CEO whose company may be on the block soon.

Looking for a more positive spin this morning? Okay, try this: Friendster’s sale represents the Internet’s power to reinvent companies. Even though no one you know uses the site, it never went away, and it has quietly amassed a reported 100 million users, almost all of them in Asia.

Google hasn’t even acknowledged the purchase yet–AppJet announced it on its blog–but when it does, I don’t expect to see a purchase price. AppJet, which hatched out of the Y Combinator incubator a couple years ago, has raised a reported $700,000 in angel funding, which means that whatever price Google (GOOG) paid won’t be material enough to require a disclosure.

AppJet says it will be working on Google’s Wave platform/product/whatever it is, which so far seems to be popular in concept but baffling in execution. Just below is an AppJet-produced video explaining its EtherPad word processing program, which allows for real-time collaboration.

[Aaron Iba photo via AppJet investor Seth Goldstein]

No purchase price disclosed, but I’m fairly confident this was in the sub-$50 million category. Teracent had been looking to raise something like $5 million earlier this year and had previously raised around $6 million, much of it from New Enterprise Associates.

I’m told the company was doing something under $2 million a year in revenue, and when I talked to CEO Vikas Jha in September, he told me that the three-and-a-half-year-old company is profitable.

One immediate beneficiary of the deal: Rival ad optimizer Tumri, which does very similar work.

And now this: eBay’s plans to spin off Skype next year are being threatened by a legal dispute over the telephony service’s underlying technology.

In a 10-Q regulatory filing Thursday, the online auctioneer said it is developing an alternative to that technology, which it licenses from Joltid, a company run by Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, but there is no guarantee of success. And if it fails in that effort and its legal dispute with Joltid drags on, eBay could be forced to shutter Skype.

“Although Skype is confident of its legal position, as with any litigation, there is the possibility of an adverse result if the matter is not resolved through negotiation,” the company said. “Skype has begun to develop alternative software to that licensed through Joltid. However, such software development may not be successful, may result in loss of functionality or customers even if successful, and will in any event be expensive. If Skype was to lose the right to use the Joltid software as the result of the litigation, and if alternative software was not available, Skype would be severely and adversely affected and the continued operation of Skype’s business as currently conducted would likely not be possible.”

That doesn’t bode well for eBay’s plans to take Skype public in the first half of 2010. Though the company insists its plans to separate the telephony service have not changed, it’s clear that eBay (EBAY) must resolve these issues before moving ahead.

Certainly, it will be difficult to gin up investor interest in an IPO for a disabled service run by a company that spent billions of dollars to purchase it and failed to secure its underlying technology.

And now this: eBay’s plans to spin off Skype next year are being threatened by a legal dispute over the telephony service’s underlying technology.

In a 10-Q regulatory filing Thursday, the online auctioneer said it is developing an alternative to that technology, which it licenses from Joltid, a company run by Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, but there is no guarantee of success. And if it fails in that effort and its legal dispute with Joltid drags on, eBay could be forced to shutter Skype.

“Although Skype is confident of its legal position, as with any litigation, there is the possibility of an adverse result if the matter is not resolved through negotiation,” the company said. “Skype has begun to develop alternative software to that licensed through Joltid. However, such software development may not be successful, may result in loss of functionality or customers even if successful, and will in any event be expensive. If Skype was to lose the right to use the Joltid software as the result of the litigation, and if alternative software was not available, Skype would be severely and adversely affected and the continued operation of Skype’s business as currently conducted would likely not be possible.”

That doesn’t bode well for eBay’s plans to take Skype public in the first half of 2010. Though the company insists its plans to separate the telephony service have not changed, it’s clear that eBay (EBAY) must resolve these issues before moving ahead.

Certainly, it will be difficult to gin up investor interest in an IPO for a disabled service run by a company that spent billions of dollars to purchase it and failed to secure its underlying technology.

But that’s the transaction video-chat firm Paltalk and Softbank have completed. Paltalk, which sold off 20 percent of its equity to Softbank for $6 million in 2004, has bought the shares back. No one has spelled out a purchase price, but I’m told the deal will be considered a “single” for Softbank–it gets its capital back, plus a return, which in this economy ought to be a home run.

This is different from the “baby buybacks” we’re seeing as the economy sputters, in which founders reclaim all or part of their companies at distressed prices after their investors give up–think eBay (EBAY) and StumbleUpon (and perhaps Skype) or more recently, ManiaTV.

Paltalk can afford to buy its shares back because it’s an Internet video company that actually makes money, which it does via a “freemium” model. Most users can hop on the service for free, but about five percent pay for some extra features, like virtual conference rooms. People familiar with the company tell me it should be on track to throw off $4 million in cash this year from revenue of $20 million. It also has extra cash on hand these days as a result of a settlement it extracted from Microsoft (MSFT) in a patent lawsuit in March.

There are lots of Web companies–let alone Web video or Web chat companies–that would like those financials. But Paltalk is a steady grower, not a rocket ship. And while the company has supposedly gone down the road with potential acquirers in the past, it’s unlikely to get acquired at a huge premium.

So, it makes sense for Softbank to take money off the table; I’m told Paltalk was its last open investment from an Internet fund it raised way back in 1999. Paltalk CEO Jason Katz says he now owns 80 percent of his company.