The Industry Standard - Google-Salesforce merger announced - Comments

Dec 1 and no such

David Kuan — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:56:16 -0800

Dec 1 and no such announcement made. Unfavorable judgment can now be made for this prediction.

Shiv is right. The title

David Kuan — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:43:16 -0700

Shiv is right. The title should be changed to "announced" instead of "completed".

Somethings wrong here. The

Shiv Bhandari — Thu, 29 May 2008 10:10:06 -0700

Somethings wrong here. The prediction is titled "Google-Salesforce merger completed" but the body says "the merger needs not yet been approved or completed." One of the two has to be changed. I'm surprised that nobody's said anything about this.
Meanwhile, "Google-Salesforce Deal Looks Increasingly Improbable" - http://www2.meltedcube.com/blog/ebusiness-entrepreneurs/google-salesforc...

Salesforce CEO has been

JORDI MARTINEZ — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 08:56:22 -0700

Salesforce CEO has been always against any merger with other software companies, he likes its company's independence. Oracle speculated with it before and they were rejected.
I think some collaboration between both companies is possible, but I do not think Salesforce desires any integration with a larger company.

fer sure

Kate Carruthers — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:12:22 -0700

fer sure

Google-Salesforce merger announced

The Standard — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:21:28 -0700

Judgment on Dec. 1, 2008: This did not come to pass, which the community correctly predicted. -- The Industry Standard

Original prediction: Larry Dignan and others have argued that, especially given the recent Google Apps integration announcement, a merger between Salesforce and Google makes a lot of sense:

"Wouldn’t it make sense for these two companies to merge? I always figured Salesforce would wind up with Oracle–or even Microsoft or SAP. However, Google would also be a very logical acquirer. Last week, I noted that IT execs are very interested in what Google can do in their companies. They’re just not quite sold yet and are wary of depending too much on Google’s cloud. A purchase of Salesforce would get these IT fence sitters off the fence rather quickly."

This is a prediction that Google and Salesforce will announce a merger (note that the merger needs not yet been approved or completed) by November 28, 2008. Although unlikely, a hostile takeover bid, for example, on the part of Google, will not be grounds for favorable judgement, as the transaction would not qualify as a merger per se. Note also that numerous pundits have suggested that Google will "buy" Salesforce, but that the offical term for such activity in this case is "merge," given that both companies are publicly traded (Salesforce would obviously be the target).