Consider that Apple is now seeking help from a group that cast about the digital-music sector for years, swapped out business models multiple times (without ever finding a profitable one), and basically did little to distinguish themselves.
CNET scribe Greg Sandoval • Describing his skepticism on Lala, which Apple acquired last week. Sandoval’s take on the startup is beyond unfair – it’s straight-up uninformed. He wrote about the service as if the current version of the site – which sites such as Pitchfork and The Onion AV Club, and heck, we, regularly use – was nothing special. In our opinion, it reads as if he’s never actually used the service, which was struggling financially but had solid business deals in place. Why is Apple interested in Lala, like Google also was? Simple. Because it has a huge, passionate, cult audience – an audience bored by iTunes. (By the way, Sandoval totally missed Google’s Onebox setup, which TechCrunch was quite excited about.) Write about it when you know what you’re talking about, Greg. source
We’re sorry for all the dirty jokes we’ve made lately, but they’re WAY too easy to make. Anyway, Stanley plans to buy Black & Decker in an all-stock deal for $3.5 billion. They’ve been trying to share the same tool belt for a while now, but they only pulled it off today. We’re going to stop writing now, just so we can avoid making another tool pun.source
The pilots are likely gonna lose their jobs. We sure hope so. Last week, the uproar over a plane that disappeared just before it was supposed to land initially had people thinking the plane was hijacked. Then, the pilots were drunk. Then, the pilots were arguing. Here’s what it really was: The pilots were on their laptops, while one was showing the other Delta Air Lines’ new scheduling system – which is changing for the pilots due to the continuing merger of Delta and Northwest Airlines. We’re not sure if we believe this. We bet they were just playing Canabalt. source
The Now Network might be a thing of the past. Sprint’s shares surged this morning on word that Deutsche Telekom AG was looking into buying the third-largest wireless company. Now, T-Mobile isn’t a bad company, so it’s not like, we don’t know, AT&T buying them, but Sprint JUST announced this killer unlimited plan. We could see it going away under T-Mobile. source
Comcast made a $54 billion bid for Disney out of the blue. Everyone laughed at them because it was so unexpected. Their shareholders didn’t like it. source
Comcast has spent years saving up massive amounts of cash in their coffers. They’re glancing around. Investors are concerned they may do a repeat. source