Vivendi is forking over $1.7 billion to take a controlling stake in videogame publisher Activision. With their powers combined, they'll create a new game-publishing goliath, Activision Blizzard, ostensibly worth $18.9 billion. In size, it will rival longstanding industry leader Electronic Arts. The deal pairs Vivendi-owned Vivendi Games and Blizzard, the folks behind online multiplayer game World of Warcraft, with Activision's portfolio of Tony Hawk-licensed skateboarding games and Guitar Hero.

Since acquiring LiveJournal in 2005, Six Apart has gotten little but grief from the blogging site. Now, at last, it's gotten some cash. The San Francisco-based blog-software company has sold LiveJournal to Sup, a Russian media concern. Ostensibly, the purchase of LiveJournal two years ago was meant to improve Six Apart's Web technology and accelerate its entry into ad-supported blog publishing. Instead?

There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Microsoft executive Mark Wolfram told a breakfast table full of VCs this week that no startup is too small to acquire if its founders are "smart technical leaders" and it has "key intellectual property," according to Beyond Binary. If there's a sweet spot, Wolfram said, it's a company with 50 to 100 employees worth around $50 million.

Disney's buying 20 Internet startups in the next two years, and suddenly startuppers have a whole new world to imagine. They know about selling out to the same old tech giants: At Google, get rich and leave for another startup; at Yahoo, get bogged down in bureaucracy; at Microsoft, disappear like Haley Joel Osment. But what happens to a startup at Disney? Here's an inside look.

Hey founders, if you're worried about getting roped onto Google's kindergarten campus wait 'til you hear about the latest acquisition predator. The Mouse.

Though the timing of Digg's deal with the Wall Street Journal was coincidental, we're told, it has sparked a new wave of whispers that News Corp. might be taking another look at the headline-voting site. We've heard a very specific number bruited about: News Corp., rumor has it, would pay $340 million to buy Digg. And there's a new angle to a potential deal: At the same time, News Corp. would take a stake in Revision3, the online-video startup which shares founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson with Digg.

In private moments, Dodgeball cofounder Dennis Crowley will tell any startup entrepreneur in New York asking: Avoid getting acquired by Google. "Sure, he's not upset about the $40 million and he's glad to be dating models," a source close to Crowley told me. "But he's not happy with Google." Not all Google-acquired founders are so bitter. Word is the FeedBurner guys love it at Google. But FeedBurner's best innovations are in advertising, not engineering. Some say the same goes for Google these days. (Photo by rosswerks)

Last week, we floated the rutemor that Digg might buy CoRank, a website which helps companies build their own versions of the popular website where users vote on and discuss news headlines. CoRank CEO Rogelio Bernal Andreo issued a flat denial to TechCrunch that the companies had held talks. But now we hear Andreo has been furiously backpedaling on that claim. Why? Shortly after Andreo talked to TechCrunch, but before the story ran, talks between the companies started.

IBM purchased Canadian software maker Cognos for $5 billion in cash. Big Blue generally looks at acquisitions under $1 billion, making this one its largest acquisition ever. The largest prior acquisition was of Lotus for $3.5 billion many years (and a bubble or two) ago. [FT]

AOL has confirmed it will buy Quigo, an Israeli startup which targets ads based on the content of websites. Earlier this week, we reported Yahoo had its eyes on Quigo too, but failed to acquire the company because Quigo CEO Mike Yavo and Yahoo exec Chris Bolte couldn't get over differences rooted in their time together at search engine AltaVista. But some of you told us Yahoo got lucky losing out. Reports put Quigo's price at around $300 million. Tell us, did AOL overpay?

BEA Systems will share financials and other internal data with shareholder Carl Icahn in an attempt to convince him that BEA is worth more than the $17 per share that Oracle had offered in an unsolicited takeover bid. BEA has not filed a quarterly report with the SEC in over a year because of an investigation into possible backdating of stock options. [WSJ]

Seeking to expand his company's storage offerings, Michael Dell is buying EqualLogic for $1.4 billion. This is a monumentally bad move. Leave aside the details of what EqualLogic does. (Something to do with tying storage servers together on a network.) Let's remember what Dell does. Dell is a highly skilled repackager of commodity tech, like Intel microprocessors, Seagate hard drives, and the Windows OS. Add a few extra parts, slap some plastic around it, and you've got a PC. Sure, it can make some money installing that PC, too. But what it doesn't do, and shouldn't do, is try to advance the state of the art on its own. His own hard experience should have told Michael Dell not to make this deal.

Last week, we reported that AOL was in the market to buy another ad network. Then, over the weekend, reports came that the Time Warner unit will pay $300 million for Israeli ad network Quigo. Mazel tovs all around, of course. But the big loser in the deal? Yahoo, natch.

The Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday that its decision regarding Google's purchase of DoubleClick will focus on antitrust rather than privacy issues. A decision could come this month. And this has absolutely nothing to do with the detailed search logs Google keeps on all queries originating from ftc.gov. [AdAge]

GPS device maker Garmin has offered $3.3 billion for digital mapping service Tele Atlas. Rival TomTom offered $2.5 billion for Tele Atlas in an earlier bid. Currently, Garmin uses maps from Navteq. After that company was acquired by Nokia, Garmin started looking for other options. With $1 billion in cash, Garmin would finance the acquisition through cash and loans from several banks. What's this all mean? With Navteq off the market, expect something of a bidding war for Tele Atlas between Garmin and TomTom — and maybe Google. Garmin has an advantage here, though — it already purchased 5 percent of Tele Atlas on the open market. Shares in Garmin fell 11 percent after the bid was announced as investors worried that the purchase price could rise significantly. (Photo by AP/Reed Hoffmann)

Carl Icahn, the activist investor, is pressing BEA Systems to put Oracle's $17 per share offer to a shareholder vote. Icahn owns 13 percent of the software maker. "BEA is badly miscalculating Oracle's desire ... Oracle doesn't need BEA. At some point, Oracle will buy these guys, but it's completely at Oracle's discretion," says Peter Goldmacher, a Cowen & Co. analyst. Since there hasn't been a competing offer in the three weeks since the initial unsolicited bid, Oracle remains BEA's only suitor. Correction: Bitches not so jealous after all.

Private-equity firm Platinum Equity Partners has acquired Covad, a VOIP and broadband service provider, for $1.02 a share. [GigaOm]

BEA Systems responded quickly to Oracle's rebuff of its $21-a-share counteroffer. We "cannot endorse a proposal that ... significantly undervalues BEA," spake BEA's board. BEA's stock price has fallen below Oracle's $17 bid, which suggests investors think a deal is increasingly unlikely. [Mercury News]