IBM’s Been Taking Notes

IBM’s Been Taking Notes — Lotus Development Corporation announced Sunday that it will let itself be acquired by IBM at a price of $64 a share, with the total deal working out to about $3.5 billion (see TidBITS-280). Acquisition of Lotus is expected to put IBM in a better position to compete with Microsoft in the areas of desktop applications and groupware products. There’s no word yet on the future of Lotus’s Macintosh products, although long-time Macintosh advocates might find it ironic that IBM could be peddling Mac software in the near future. [GD]