At the height of the telecom boom, JDS Uniphase had more than 10,000 employees in Ottawa - a.k.a. Silicon Valley North - but now the company is but a mere shadow of its former self. Earlier this week, the company - which insists on calling itself JDSU these days - sold its manufacturing business in Ottawa to Fabrinet. This will reduce JDS's workforce in Ottawa to 350 from 650. While JDS's shrinking profile in Ottawa has been well-documented, the manufacturing facility sale just hammers home the company's lack of any kind of legacy in Canada. JDS was a high-tech success story nurtured and grown in this country. At the end of the day, there's little left. Perhaps the only person to do well from JDS's riches to rags story is former CEO Josef Straus, who walked away with millions and millions and millions of dollars, and for whatever reason, is still held in high esteem within the Ottawa high-tech community.

Michael Neuman's time as EchoStar Communications' president and chief operating officer lasted all of eight months after he resigned earlier this week - apparently due to philosophical differences with chairman and CEO Charlie Ergen. Before joining EchoStar, Neumann was president of Bell Mobility but "resigned" as the wireless carriers was struggling with a troubling billing system problem.

According to Wikipedia, Google has made 21 acquisitions and two investments (Baidu, Current Communications) since 2001. The biggest was dMarc Broadcasting, which cost $102-million (and an additional $1.1-billion if certain performance targets are met over the next three years). While everyone keeps waiting for Google to make a big splash (eBay?, Walt Disney?), the company has focused on making small, strategic acquisitions to acquire people and technology to bolster existing services. If you look at little closer, many of these acquisitions are either layered on top of other ones or clustered to establish an asset base. A good example is the back-to-back-to-back purchases last year of Android, ReqWireless and Dodgeball, which enhanced Google's wireless technology portfolio. The acquisition of MeasureMap fits into this M&A approach as it builds on top of Urchin and the launch of Google Blog search. Look for Google to make another deal to round out the portfolio (Technorati). Kuro5Hin put together an extensive list last summer that may provide some clues as to future moves.