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Executives at Google no doubt are heaving signs of relief at the outcome of the latest -- and possibly last -- phase of the Java copyright and patent trial: The jury unanimously found that Google did not infringe Oracle's patents. U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is presiding over the trial in...

When AOL made a $1 billion deal to sell patents to Microsoft last April, its stock jumped up about 43 percent on the news. After all, AOL could use a $1 billion shot in the arm. Who couldn't? But what is behind this string of sales of patents? Why are patents so important to large tech firms like Mi...

A quick look at the wireless industry over the last several years shows wave after wave of innovation and success. In fact, success has been bigger than anyone's wildest dreams. However, success does not come to all. Why do some companies, like AT&T and Verizon, seem to hit the ball out of the p...

Dell took a hard hit on Wall Street Wednesday after it revealed sluggish PC sales and a disappointing quarterly earnings report. Shares of Dell were down 17 percent Wednesday, Dell's biggest one-day drop since 2000. The stock, already down 15 percent on the year, closed at $12.49. Shareholders expre...

Before Apple and Samsung launched a new chapter in their multicountry, multiargument patent dispute, Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, told the two sides to sit down and try to iron out their differences. Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Choi Gee-su...

SAP has revealed plans to acquire Ariba, an enterprise e-commerce network, for US$4.3 billion as part of the German company's expansion into cloud computing. SAP will purchase Ariba for $45 per share -- about 20 percent more than its market price. Ariba's board approved the purchase unanimously. Th...

After dropping to $31 per share on Tuesday, Facebook's stock is hinting at a turnaround Wednesday morning, hovering around $32.15 per unit. Unless the stock surges past its $38 per unit launch price, however, it is hard to imagine how those responsible for its disappointing debut -- a group that inc...

Motorola Mobility's financial performance has been less than stellar in the last three years, so its acquisition by Google for $12.5 billion could be a boon for the company. "Motorola has been running at an operating loss for quite a few quarters," observed Ramon T. Llamas, who analyzes mobile devic...

U.S. government agencies are looking everywhere they can to cut costs -- including the cost of information technology. Tight budgets will be the dominating factor in federal IT procurement over the next several years -- at least. Yet in the face of budget discipline -- and even slightly projected de...

Amazon has begun taking pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S III, a handset that will become available in Europe at the end of this month. The offering has caused some head-scratching: If this were the newest iPhone, the rush to get one might be understandable. However, the unlocked Galaxy S III smar...

Google has officially closed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. This could transform the search engine giant from a software player to a maker of hardware: smartphones, tablet PCs and even set-top boxes. More importantly for Google is gaining control of Motorola's patent portfol...

The European Union's antitrust ax is about to fall on Google, but the company can still avoid the worst repercussions. That is the essence of the message from EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia. After a year-and-a-half investigation into Google's activities in the market, there are four areas of con...

The x86 data center revolution has been a tale of industry standard upward mobility pressuring and displacing traditional systems. In essence, continually evolving x86-based systems and complementary technologies -- particularly virtualization, memory and I/O -- have provided hardware vendors the me...

No one could accuse Facebook of having beginner's luck on Wall Street. The company's initial public offering on Friday was delayed by two hours due to a glitch in Nasdaq's trading system, prompting many traders to cancel orders because they were not sure of the stock's price. The day, in general, wa...

Five major cable service providers in the United States are teaming up to allow their high-speed Internet customers access each other's metro WiFi networks. The five are Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable. The agreement will create a chain of more t...