Looks like the economy, and with it the urge to splurge, is back — especially in Silicon Valley. After a long chill, the M&A market seems to be thawing — welcome news for entrepreneurs and their backers, who have been stymied by the lack of exits and a moribund IPO market. And the recently announced [...]

Adobe said today it’s agreed to buy analytics and metrics firm Omniture for $1.8 billion in cash, or $21.50 a share. Customers want to integrate Adobe’s online products like Flash with services like those offered by Omniture, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said during the conference call announcing the deal. With the purchase, Adobe diversifies its [...]

The TechCrunch 50 hasn’t even begun yet and already it’s making news. Online personal finance site Mint, which took the top prize at the event in 2007, has evidently been acquired by Intuit (INTU). Price: A reported $170 million… Tweet This Post

Intuit will acquire the free online personal finance service Mint, we’ve confirmed from a source close to the deal, for around $170 million. The deal should be announced in the next few days… Tweet This Post

A tipster tells us that Intuit (INTU), the giant maker of personal and small-business software, is buying red-hot Mint.com, which provides online money management tools. We have no idea if this is true, and we’re skeptical, though it certainly makes sense. Intuit has a ton of cash and no growth. Mint is growing like crazy [...]

Nokia is set to announce today that it has acquired Plum Ventures, the San Francisco “microsocial networking” start-up, for an undisclosed amount, sources said… Tweet This Post

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has purchased Plum, a platform used to create private social networks. In a brief statement, the mobile giant said little about its plans for the startup, noting only that the company would “complement Nokia’s Social Location services.”… Tweet This Post

Google, not content to only use clean technology on its campuses, has decided to get involved in the solar thermal energy business. The company will work to improve the mirrors used in solar thermal systems, making them more affordable for widespread commercial and utility use… Tweet This Post

Michael Lazerow, CEO Buddy Media, predicts that Twitter will continue to scale and then sell within the next year so someone else can figure out the annoying business model part. If he were Google or Microsoft, he would cough up $2 billion and somehow harness the 100-200 million users later… Tweet This Post

A group of well known venture capital and large private equity firms are pooling resources to make a bid to acquire eBay-owned Skype, according to a source close to the deal. Investors in the proposed purchase may include newly-formed Andreesen Horowitz, Index Ventures (who were early investors in Skype before the ebay acquisition), and one [...]

Online telephony service Skype will be sold by eBay to a group of private investors, possibly including Netscape founder Marc Andreessen’s new venture capital group, and the deal will be announced on Tuesday according to a report by a team of reporters from the New York Times… Tweet This Post

Yahoo has just officially acquired Maktoob, a very popular Arabic web portal that offers services including search, payments, social network, and auctions. Rumors of an aquisition have been building for months, and in the last hour they reached a head as news of an impending press conference broke. The price hasn’t been announced, but our [...]