Oracle's profits up 4 percent despite lower sales -- Quarterly revenue was off 5 percent, but the company kept costs down and grew profit margins by 4 percent. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company earned $1.124 billion, or 22 cents a share, on sales of $5.054 billion. In some areas the company was hit hard. New license revenue was off 22%, and revenue from consulting fell 23 percent. On a conference call, president Safra Catz said Oracle's operating profit margin hit 46%, a company record. If Oracle closes its pending deal to acquire Sun Microsystems, that would, Catz said, immediately add $1.5 billion to Oracle's annual profits.
Opus Capital Ventures lowers the carried interest fee for its sixth fund -- The firm's reduction of the fee from 25% to 20% won't affect most people directly, but it's a sign of potential change in the venture capital business. The Wall Street Journal defines the carried interest fee as "the portion of profits that a venture capital fund takes when a portfolio company is sold or goes public." Opus has cut its potential take on IPOs and acquisitions by one-fifth, and set a precedent for other firms' partners to press for a lower carried interest fee.
Global PC shipments fell 2.4 percent in Q2 -- CNet made a table out of IDC's report.
Google acquires book-scanning tech -- CAPTCHA images used to make humans prove they're not computers trying to break into a website to steal customer information. The images are partly generated by scanning old books, and then having humans type in what the individual letters and numbers are. Over time, the software gets smarter about recognizing text. The book-scanning people at Google have deduced that "reCAPTCHA’s unique technology improves the process that converts scanned images into plain text," according to an announcement on the Google blog.
Perfecto Mobile raised $7 million -- Existing investors Carmel Ventures and Vertex Venture Capital bought in for another round. The Tel Aviv company, founded in 2006, plans to expand its mobile device testing service cloud, used by mobile software makers to test applications and software platforms. A statement from the company promises to "increase the number of handsets available for testing in more geographical locations." Can they test my iPhone at my apartment? It never works there.
Russian search engine Yandex raises $100M at $1.1B valuation -- Twitter isn't the only billion-dollar website on the planet. UFG Asset Management, Baring Vostok Capital Partners, and Tiger Global Management bought a total of nine percent of Yandex for about $100 million. Yandex made a profit of over $100 million on $300 million in sales last year, according to a Russian news report.
Mocapay gets $3 million for pay- by-phone system -- Does the cartoon at right look like a better way to pay for stuff than carrying cards in your wallet or purse? Mocapay, a Denver company founded as FEED in 2006, wants you to upload the clutter of reward cards, gift cards, loyalty cards, whatever else onto your phone. Investors Spartan Mobile and Lacuna provided the funding.