While most of the recent mergers here didn’t cause a stir here in my cubicle, I nearly flipped when Steve said Y! had just bought Zimbra. As an early user and reviewer, I very much think Zimbra has the oomph to beat Google’s office suite, maybe even Microsoft’s in the distant future.
I really didn’t realize Y! was trying to beat Google at the office suite business, but it does appear with this $350M purchase, that they are going to try to do just that. If you think the $350 was a little high, you might look at what TC has reported:
The company has raised $30.5 million over three rounds of funding from Benchmark Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Accel Capital, Sumitomo and Duff, Ackerman & Goodrich. They announced 6 million paid mailboxes back in March, and more recently inked a deal with Comcast that brings another 12 million potential subscribers.
Boomtown even mentioned that the 12M subscribers thingy might be a part of their ‘triple play’ services (phone, web, cable service).
Pretty cool, huh? I can’t wait to see where they go with this one!
Here’s a comparison of Google Apps vs. Zimbra hosting:
http://faqs.01.com/#33
Here’s a note on the impact of the Yahoo! acquisition on Zimbra partners like 01.com:
http://blog.01.com/?p=325
I guess we need to get MBL wrapped up so that I can start focusing on Zimbra.
Should be a fun one.
I do heart Zimbra. I hope we can use it internally
Regular acquires by Yahoo! are looking forward to give strong competition to Google. Recently Yahoo! acquires Mybloglog