BubbleShare, Counting Unhatched Chickens

Michael Arrington

J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news. Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995) and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich... → Learn More

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006

We previously reported that Toronto based BubbleShare was in acquisition discussion with News Corp., through their Fox Interactive subsidiary. The initial rumors came out of two Toronto-area blogs (here and here), strongly suggesting that a direct or indirect leak occured directly from the company.

One thing we know for certain at this point – the deal with News Corp., rumored to be in the $5 million range, is now dead. A source with knowledge of the deal says the reason is the leak, which angered News Corp. Internal strife among BubbleShare equity holders may have also played a part.

Albert Lai, BubbleShare’s CEO, isn’t saying much on the record. His message comes down to “We’re not commenting on whether or not there was a deal, but if there was one, and it died, it had nothing to do with a leak, which never occured” (this is not a direct quote). Fox declined to comment.

Despite the turmoil, BubbleShare is a service that we continue to applauded for its ease of use and intuitive interface.

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