ORACLE

A month after the disastrous initial public offering of Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), the No. 1 social networking site, investment bankers speculate social network site Yammer could be on the block.

U.S. investors are getting back into real estate, but their efforts are being complicated by the uncertain housing market.

By making the Internet universal and ubiquitous, though, technology also eroded corporate control. No longer will International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) or Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) completely control everything in their networks, despite their networks of worldwide data centers.

U.S. manufacturing productivity surged 5.4 percent in the first quarter, the most since last year?s third quarter, even as overall productivity eased about 1 percent, the U.S. Department of Labor said.

Now that the initial public offering of Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), the No. 1 social networking site, has lost 32 percent of its value, technology giants including International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM), Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) are on a shopping spree. That may chill the IPO pipeline.

Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), the No. 1 database developer, said it had agreed to acquire private Collective Intellect to bolster its Cloud capabilities for software-as-a-service functions.

Faced with the disastrous fallout from the initial public offering of Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), the No. 1 social network, other technology companies that had been waiting to go next may reconsider.

Google Inc's Android mobile platform has not infringed Oracle Corp's patents, a California jury decided, putting an indefinite hold on Oracle's quest for damages in a legal fight between the two Silicon Valley giants over smartphone technology.

Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL), the No. 1 database company, said it would acquire private cloud media marketer Vitrue for an undisclosed sum a day after German rival SAP (NYSE: SA), Europe's No. 1 software company, offered to acquire e-commerce specialist Ariba Inc. (Nasdaq: ARBA) for $4.3 billion.

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) has agreed Tuesday to buy Internet commerce company Ariba Inc. (Nasdaq: ARBA) for $4.3 billion, as the German business software giant looks to expand its cloud-based services and challenge rival Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL).

In 1999, Andrew Grove, then Chairman of Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), the No. 1 chipmaker, published a bestseller, ?Only the Paranoid Survive.?

Shares of BMC Software, which specializes in enterprise products, soared nearly 10 percent after Elliott Associates, the venerable New York hedge fund, said it has acquired a stake above 5 percent.

New Labor Department data suggests a strong start to jobs growth in January may not get wiped out by negative growth heading into the third quarter.

Shares of Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), the world's biggest database developer, fell despite the company?s apparent victory over Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), the No. 1 search engine, in a vicious patent lawsuit.

Google Inc infringed some of Oracle Corp's copyrights on the Java programming language, a U.S. jury found on Monday after days of deliberation.

An Oracle Corp attorney ruled out a settlement with Hewlett-Packard Co in a bitter lawsuit over the Itanium microprocessor, a day after the judge refused to resolve the case for either side before trial.

Now that the first anniversary of Osama Bin Laden?s death shed renewed light on the ?needle in the haystack? side of data analysis that helped catch him, investors might wonder how to take advantage of it.

It?s not just enterprises and government agencies that are already starting to benefit from the new era of so-called ?Big Data.? Consumers are already beneficiaries, even if they don?t know it.

Early Android OS revenue numbers have been revealed in a series of slides pertaining to the ongoing legal battle between Google and Oracle.

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM), the No. 2 computer company, plans to acquire private Vivisimo, a data analytics specialist, to bolster its push into handling ?Big Data.?

The new investor bywords are “big data.” Initial public offerings last week for both Splunk (Nasdaq: SPLK) and Proofpoint (Nasdaq: PFPT) were smash hits because of it. Big companies like IBM (NYSE: IBM) may be the biggest beneficiaries.