Rumor has it that, until 3 weeks ago, Facebook was negotiating to buy Twitter for $500 million. According to TechCrunch, the $500 million comprised $100 million in cash and $400 million in stock, based on Facebook’s valuation at $15 billion.

Negotiations, however, ended 3 weeks ago. Among other things, Twitter had doubts about the value of Facebook’s stock and Facebook had concerns over Twitter’s burn rate and revenue earning potential.

Source: Robin Wauters, “Acquisition Dance Between Facebook And Twitter Over For Now?” TechCrunch, November 24, 2008

Google will pay $125 million to settle two lawsuits with authors and publishers. The settlement effectively gives the company the go-ahead to digitize millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search.

Subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the agreement - reached after two years of negotiations - resolves a class-action lawsuit brought by book authors and the Authors Guild, as well as a separate lawsuit filed by five large publishers as representatives of the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

Under the settlement, Google will make payments totaling $125 million which will be used to establish the Book Rights Registry, to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers, and to cover legal fees.

Holders worldwide of U.S. copyrights will be able to register their works with the Book Rights Registry and receive compensation from institutional subscriptions, book sales, ad revenues and other possible revenue models, as well as a cash payment if their works have already been digitized.

Source: Google, “Authors, Publishers, and Google Reach Landmark Settlement”, Google Press Release, October 27, 2008

According to Tech Crunch, Google and Digg have signed a letter of intent and are close to a deal whereby Google will buy Digg, and bring it under its Google News arm, for around $200 million.

Among other things, this may help solve two issues for Google:

1. Digg will give Google News a big boost - which, according to some, has failed to reach its potential in terms of popularity and, to date, hasn’t had a revenue model (see http://www.kikabink.com/news/46/is-google-news-a-dog/).
2. Google can take the Digg-like voting technology its currently testing for its search engine results straight from the source.

Having said all this, the deal could still be derailed. Who knows, Microsoft might wish to intervene, either by offering a higher price or, as Tech Crunch has suggested, offer a much lower price if Google pulls out of the acquisition.

Source: Michael Arrington, “Google In Final Negotiations To Acquire Digg For ‘Around $200 Million’”, Tech Crunch, July 22, 2008