China firm buys Media.net

A group of Chinese investors has acquired ad-tech startup Media.net for about $900 Million in cash with plans to eventually sell the company to an obscure telecommunications firm whose shares have been suspended from trading since last year.

Media.net, which is based in Dubai and New York, is touting this as the third largest ad-tech acquisition in history. The company provides the technology powering contextual ads offered by Yahoo and Microsoft Bing search Engine. The system is similar to one offered by Google, choosing which ads to show based on the content of the web page they appear on.

Media.net generated $232 million in revenue last year, more than half of which came from mobile visitors. The US accounts for 90 percent of Media.net revenue, but the company is hoping to make a big push into China after the deal. The consortium buying Media.net is led by Zhang, the chairman of Beijing Miteno Communication Technology. His telecom firm has been moving aggressively the transition through an acquisition. 

Comcast to buy DreamWorks Animation

Comcast Corp, the parent of Universal Pictures, agreed to buy DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. in a deal valued at $3.8 Billion, building on the studio’s film and TV franchises by characters like Shrek as well as a US based production house.

Comcast will pay $41 a share in cash for the animation studio. Buying the maker of the Shrek and Kung Fu Panda films will bolster Comcast children lineup in theaters and add online assets like Awesomeness TV, which targets millennial on YouTube. Comcast would make an ideal parent for DreamWorks Animation, especially with its ownership of Illumination, maker of hit films Minions and Despicable Me.

Glendale, California based DreamWorks underwent a deep restructuring last year that reduced its workforce by 18% and cut the number of films it made after a series of flops. Under DreamWorks Animation, Illumination’s animators are largely based in Paris. With the acquisition, Universal gains a fully-fledged US based movie and TV producer and distributor.

Comcast would pay DreamWorks a fee of $200 Million if the deal is blocked by regulators. DreamWorks Animation would also provide a source of content for Universal growing theme park business. Universal already features Shrek rides at its parks in Florida, California, Japan and Singapore. The company is building a theme park in China, where Kung Fu Panda has been a big hit. 

Android Restaurant in China

It is more teatime than Terminator – a restaurant in China is electrifying customers by using more than a dozen robots to cook and deliver food. Mechanical staff greets customers, deliver dishes to tables, and even stir-fry meat and vegetables at the eatery in Kunshan, which opened last week.

It seems very strange to see robots cooking and serving foods instead of humans, but it is reality. These robots are made on Android platform and are controlled by different technologies. Two robots are positioned at the door to cheerfully greet customers and four short but humanoid machines carry trays of food to the tables. In the kitchen, two large blue robots with glowing red eyes specialize in frying, while another is dedicated to make dumplings.

The founder of the restaurant Song Yugang said that each robot costs around 40,000 Yuan ($6500) roughly equal to the annual salary of a human employee. It shows the future to this world i.e. Man vs. Machine. The restaurant, in the western province of Jiangsu, follows in the tracks of another robotic eatery, which opened in the northeastern city of Harbin in 2012.

Rising labor costs in China have encouraged manufacturers to turn to automation, and the country last year surpassed Japan to become the world’s biggest consumer of Industrial Robots. The cooking robots, which have a fixed repertoire exhibit limited artificial intelligence, and are loaded with ingredients by human staff that also helps to make some dishes. Customers at the restaurant that tucked into fried tomatoes with egg, soup, and rice were thrilled with the experience. The round headed waiter robots can only move along fixed paths, and politely asked customers to move out of their way whenever their routes are blocked. This advancement in technology has replaced humans from the work and machines are generating profits for businesspersons.

Day is not far when people will see terminators in reality!