Apr. 24--Here's some news you may have missed last week, based on staff and wire reports.

Monday

Just a week after technology big fish IBM backed out of talks to take over Sun Microsystems, the Santa Clara maker of expensive computer servers and Java software agreed to be bought by -- surprise! -- acquisitive Redwood City software giant Oracle. (Why didn't we see this Silicon Valley plot twist coming?) "The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison declared, with his characteristic level of modesty. "Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system -- applications to disk -- where all the pieces fit and work together." Oracle agreed to pay $7.4 billion for Sun in the latest in a long series of multibillion-dollar takeovers. (Oracle has absorbed PeopleSoft, BEA Systems and Siebel Systems, among other Bay Area tech names, not that we've been keeping track.) Taking into account Sun's cash on hand, both companies said the cost of the deal works out to $5.6 billion. According to a Merc report, Oracle President Safra Catz said her company expects to operate Sun at "substantially higher margins," which sounds good for investors but bad for employees; the merger is expected to lead to thousands of layoffs at Sun.

Tuesday

Speaking of Silicon Valley plot twists, Sunnyvale Internet content

powerhouse Yahoo was mired most of last year in its own takeover drama with Redmond, Wash., software mega-behemoth Microsoft. That led to Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang being replaced as CEO by Carol Bartz, the direct, straight-talking, brash (and other euphemisms for sometimes foul-mouthed) former CEO of San Rafael software maker Autodesk. (Fortunately, In Hindsight is written in tape delay, so we can bleep out her occasional lapses.) Speaking with Wall Street analysts and reporters during Yahoo's quarterly earnings call, Bartz acknowledged that the company has been somewhat inefficient. For example, she said, Yahoo has had engineers in offices scattered around the world, and many managers overseeing them. "We sort of had one product management person for every three engineers, so we had a lot of people running around telling engineers what to do. Nobody was bleeping doing anything." As for Yahoo's first-quarter earnings, they were down 78 percent from a year earlier to $119 million. Revenue dropped 13 percent to about $1.6 billion. Yahoo will cut 700 jobs in its fourth round of layoffs since January 2008.

Sunnyvale chip maker Advanced Micro Devices also reported earnings for its latest quarter.