Apple has agreed to settle the e-book case for $450 million. Apple was accused of conspiring with five book publishers to fix e-book prices. The settlement would provide $400 million to consumers, but is conditioned based on the outcome of a trial in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York where Apple is being accused of violating antitrust laws.
Tell Apart is an advertising technology company that has acquired Freshplum. Based in San Francisco, Freshplum enables e-commerce websites to offer personalized discounts. The terms of the deal were undisclosed. Freshplum’s investors included New Enterprise Associates, Greylock Partners, Google Ventures and Charles River Ventures.
Rupert Murdoch, the founder, chairman, and CEO of News Corporation, said that he made an unsuccessful $80 billion bid to take over Time Warner. Chase Carey, the president of News Corporation’s Fox network, met with Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes in early June to discuss a takeover proposal worth $85 in stock and cash for each Time Warner share. This was about a 25% premium to Time Warner’s stock price at that time.
Amazon.com briefly put up a website for an unlimited e-book and audiobook subscription service called Kindle Unlimited, according to GigaOm. Amazon.com is planning to offer users with unlimited access to 600,000 digital books for $9.99 per month. The pricing of the service is comparable to Oyster and Scribd, which charges $9.95 and $8.99 per month, respectively. Some of the titles that Amazon.com will offer through the Kindle Unlimited subscription includes The Hunger Games, 1984, Flash Boys and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Realogy Holdings, the owner of brands like Coldwell Banker, Century 21, ERA and Sotheby’s International has acquired New Jersey based publicly-traded ZipRealty for $6.75 per share in an all-cash deal valued at $166 million.
Reality TV star Kim Kardashian West has a mobile game on the Apple App Store and it is the second most popular free app. The game, called “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood,” is the fifth highest grossing app in the App Store after games like “Clash of Clans,” “Candy Crush Saga,” “Pandora Radio” and “Game of War – Fire Age.” Kardashian’s app has in-app purchases that range at between $3.99 – $59.99.
VentureBeat has announced that it has raised $2.6 million in funding. Crosslink Capital led this round of funding with participation from WaldenVC, Formation8, KDDI and Icon Venture Partners. VentureBeat plans to use the funding to build out its research division VB Insight.
Yahoo! has gained the exclusive rights for the sixth season of Community for tens of millions of dollars. NBC cancelled the sitcom earlier this year after its fifth season. The show seemed to start struggling during its third season, but it retained a loyal cult-like fan base. In the fifth season, Chevy Chase and Donald Glover departed from the cast, making it difficult to keep the same charm it had in the first season. Hulu was deep in negotiations for the show in the last few weeks of June.
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