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Look before you leap! All year long rumors have been swirling around that E*TRADE (ETFC) was on the auction block being prepared for an acquisition by a bigger fish interested in its customers and superior trading platform. I have not used E-TRADE so I do not have first hand experience. However, this has been acknowledged broadly and I have received very positive comments from regular users when I have written about it.

The leading suitor seems to be TD AmeriTrade Holding (AMTD), with Charles Schwab Corp (SCHW) mentioned as perhaps having similar but less conspicuous interest. For Schwab it may be as much about keeping E-TRADE out of a competitors hands as chasing the business.

Playboy is such a mess that even the hint that a company is interested in it triggers a reaction. Oak Hill Capital Partners, a private equity firm, announced Wednesday that it has no interest in buying ailing adult media company Playboy (PLA), despite previous media reports indicating the contrary. Of course, this sent Playboy's shares down 3.7%. Oak Hill didn't just say "no way" to the present but made it clear for the future as well.

This follows a statement by Golden Gate Capital that it wouldn't be involved in a Playboy acquisition, again, despite suggestions in the media that it might make a move for the bunny. The latest possible buyer is Iconix Brand Group, which is generally hungry for brand acquisitions. Playboy is keeping its mouth shut on the matter.

Unless you already have a major foothold in the search engine market – or an amazing, disruptive technology that can make the world take notice – there isn't much point in staying. Competing with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is hard enough, even when you're Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) or Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) ... and, apparently, when you're IAC/InterActive Corp (NASDAQ: IACI). Barry Diller is ready to give up Jeeves, but only if asked nicely.

Diller's presence in the search space is Ask.com, ranked #4 behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing. With a substantial gap between first and second, fourth barely registers at all. Ask.com has only a 2% U.S. market share, according to Hitwise, more than 60 percentage points behind the industry leader.

A very interesting piece of news passed the wire late Friday, October 23. Smart Choices, which is a million-dollar food labeling program, was voluntarily halted on Friday thanks to a bit of mislabeling.

Earlier in the week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it was looking into Smart Choices' labeling practices. The FDA feels that Smart Choices (although the company wasn't named as a specific target by the government) may use misleading labels on some of the products it has deemed nutritionally sound.

On Wednesday, Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam told employees via letter that the company is going to wind down all of its hedge funds. In a Wall Street Journal article (subscription required), a person familiar with Galleon said that one of the alternatives the company is exploring is selling out to another firm.

These alternatives were approached by Rajaratnam in his letter, as he told employees that it is "in the best interest of our investors and employees to conduct an orderly wind down of Galleon's funds while we explore various alternatives for our business."

After more than a year of speculation, it seems that German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom will not buy U.S.-based wireless giant Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S). Deutsche Telekom CFO Timotheus Hoettges indicated that the American wireless competitive landscape had consolidated enough, and the control that the four largest wireless carries in the U.S. have wouldn't make a purchase wise.

Hoettges was quoted as saying, "There are four national players in the U.S. market for 300 million households, while in Europe, where we have 350 million households, there are 50 to 70 operators." It's pretty clear that he thinks the U.S. wireless market is controlled by an oligopoly of operators, which seem to move in tandem with each other in terms of price control and roll out of new technology. Do the "large four" -- Verizon (NYSE: VZ)Wireless, AT&T (NYSE: T), Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile USA -- move in lockstep with each other for the most part to not give any of the competition a large advantage?

Let's file this under something that didn't need to happen (kind of like a Bob Dylan Christmas album) -- if the story is real. Apparently, Kellogg (NYSE: K) is planning to battle the rampant counterfeit cornflake market by individually laser etching its name into each of your cornflakes. Seriously, the Guardian quotes Kellogg's as stating, "Now you'll be able to tell your Corn Flakes from you corn fakes!"

So, is it real? It seems like a good number of bloggers feel that this is a hoax, but there are others that are covering the story like it is true news. So are we dealing with a master hoax or reality? We will find out in the coming days, I am sure, but let's treat this like it is real. Could you imagine personalized Corn Flakes? Perhaps we could call them (insert your own name here) Flakes, with your last name etched into each corn flakey little morsel. The possibilities are endless: advertising, wedding proposals, birthday wishes. Of course someone would have to read the flakes before they get soggy.

The next step remains uncertain for what will go down in history as among the worst newspaper acquisitions.

On Friday, the deadline for submitting bids for the Boston Globe, which is owned by The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), passed. Two major contenders were expected to write figures on slips of paper and slide them across the proverbial desk: Platinum Equity, a Beverly Hills-based private equity firm and owner of the San Diego Union-Tribune, and Stephen E. Taylor, whose family sold the Globe in 1993.

Gold jumped to $1033 per ounce on Tuesday, hitting a record high. Oil rose $1 per barrel. The December dollar contract is at $76.53, down $0.305 (as of 8:11 EDT).

Why is gold moving up? A news story in The Independent, a British paper, reported that secret talks are underway to dump the dollar as the currency for oil transactions. Included in the talks were China, Russia, Japan and France. They want is to replace the U.S. dollar with a basket of currencies and gold.

Is Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) getting ready to buy General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal? Hard to say. According to our sister site DailyFinance, it looks like the rumor of this theoretical event might be just that -- a rumor, nothing more. Then again, maybe there's something to it.

It seems likely, though, that Comcast does want to clinch a deal with some big media company. Remember when Comcast wanted to buy Disney (NYSE: DIS)? Quite frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if it ends up taking NBC Universal off GE's corporate hands. But which group of shareholders would this benefit the most?

Shares of Sina Corporation (NASDAQ: SINA) soared to a new 52-week high Monday following news that the Chinese media giant's deal to purchase assets of Focus Media Holding Limited (NASDAQ: FMCN) likely had fallen through. Rumors had swirled for weeks suggesting that the deal might not be completed.

Sina was set to acquire a portion of Focus Media's business that places advertising in malls, airports, office buildings and other places for $1.66 billion. The agreement is set to expire Wednesday, Sept. 30, without approval from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. The government reportedly did not respond to repeated requests for approval. Both companies said Monday in a joint statement that they would not extend a deadline for closing the transaction.

Just a few weeks after speculation that Best Buy Co. (NYSE: BBY) may be on the lookout for buying up video game retailer Gamestop Corp. (NYSE: GME), the CFO of the largest consumer electronics company in the U.S. is now saying that the used video game industry is "strategically very interesting." This is sly-speak for "we're on the prowl for the acquisition in the space that makes the best sense."

Well, it's been an exciting month for the video-game industry. Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) released The Beatles: Rock Band to the market. Nintendo (OTC: NTDOY) cut the price of the Wii in an effort to better compete with Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). And rumors of consolidation in the industry are getting heavy. The buzz on some corners of Wall Street is that perhaps a major media conglomerate might want to take over THQ (NASDAQ: THQI).

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), either Viacom or Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) might be interested in the publisher. There are plenty of reasons to believe this would be a logical move for either of those two. And there are plenty of reasons to suggest that buying THQ wouldn't make sense. I mean, take Viacom: wouldn't it rather concentrate on the Rock Band franchise? As for Time Warner, does it truly desire the hassle of integrating THQ? Right now, Time Warner's stock is in an upswing, and I don't think shareholders would want to ruin such momentum with the purchase of a software company that has been experiencing growth problems.

On Thursday morning, Citigroup (NYSE: C) announced that it is going to lower the number of U.S. retail outlets, limiting the banks to six major metropolitan areas. The Wall Street Journal reports that the bank will also limit its lending mainly to wealthy customers. Citigroup chose to take this step in order to control the amount of its consumer lending, limiting its transactions to credit cards and jumbo mortgages.

According to the report, Citi will release its plans in October, when we should learn that the bank will be a presence mainly in New York, Washington D.C., Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. That said, it turns out the plan could be contingent upon approval from the U.S. Government. The report notes that some Citi executives are concerned the government may not issue approval.

Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) was just rumored to be under the takeover auspices of European telecom giant Deutsche Telekom. DT has been rumored to be looking strongly at Sprint Nextel to bolster its T-Mobile USA brand in the U.S. But now, that deal appears unlikely according to Thomas Weisel analyst James Breen.