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In an early sign of the expanded presence Google intends to have in the online ad world now that it has closed on DoubleClick, the search giant Thursday launched a Web advertising management tool aimed at smaller publishers. The company formally announced Google Ad Manager after several months in te...

The relationship between Activision and Gibson Guitar went off-key Tuesday. The two companies had until now worked in concert with one another after the hugely successful release of the third installment of the "Guitar Hero" series. Recently, however, Activision filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Cour...

Net neutrality would make it harder for the movie industry to fight piracy, Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, told attendees at the movie industry's annual ShoWest convention in Las Vegas. Net neutrality is "a clever name," Glickman said. "But at the end of...

Electronic Arts has issued a hostile $2 billion tender offer for rival video game firm Take-Two Interactive Software. The offer represents a 64 percent premium over Take-Two's closing stock price on Feb. 15, the last day of trading before EA issued a revised proposal to the New York-based company. T...

Time Warner's AOL will buy the social network Bebo for $850 million in cash, acquiring a worldwide user base of 40 million as well as a developer-friendly platform. Bebo was known to be shopping for a buyer, but the move came as something of a surprise because the social networking site already has ...

Have you watched the news lately? "Credit markets deteriorate." "Housing foreclosures at 25 year high." "Unemployment on the rise." "Weakest U.S. dollar in decades." "Consumer confidence declining." It's pretty clear there could be some nasty surprises for businesses, and marketers in particular, i...

The House Judiciary Committee held a panel hearing on the issue of net neutrality Tuesday, hearing testimony from such diverse interests as a rock band, an abortion rights advocacy group and the Christian Coalition of America. The unlikely trio converged on the Hill to call for legislation that woul...

TiVo and Google have struck a deal that will enable the digital video recorder maker's users to watch Web-based YouTube videos on their television sets. The service will be available later this year to consumers who own its Series 3 devices connected to the Internet through a broadband link, TiVo sa...

Think of this scene: A woman walks into a high-end department store on Fifth Avenue. As she enters, a salesperson rushes up to her, shouting: "Welcome back, Ms. Smith. Last time you were here, you bought some makeup. I bet you want to buy some perfume today, right?" Web-based commerce has made mass...

The European Commission has given its long-awaited blessing to Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick. Coming nearly a month ahead of an established April 2 deadline, the decision rested on the EC's findings that the merger would not hurt consumers or im...

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said his media company won't get into a bidding war with Microsoft for the right to take over Web portal Yahoo. During a keynote speech at the Bear Stearns Media Conference, Murdoch suggested the $44.6 billion offer Microsoft made for Yahoo was too rich for his com...

The stock price for Texas Instruments dropped nearly 6 percent -- and sent a minor shock wave through its biggest customer's stock -- on news that the company had lowered its profit forecast on Monday. Dallas-based TI, which supplies chips to about half the wireless handsets worldwide, saw its share...

Hulu, the video Web site from NBC Universal and News Corp., will open its virtual viewing rooms to the public Wednesday. Announced nearly one year ago, the free video streaming site launched in October with an invitation-only beta. Hulu offers its users a wide variety of video content from NBC Unive...

What is the biggest difference between shopping online and shopping in a store? In a store, customers can wander from place to place until they find something that appeals to them. Online, they usually need to have a good idea of what they are looking for in order to locate it. A small but growing n...

Every time you go online, you leave electronic footprints -- and someone is following them. When you display a page, enter a search query, play a video or click on an ad online, that information is logged by the servers of the companies that own the site or serve the video or ad or search results. T...