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North American advertisers spent US$5.75 billion on search engine marketing in 2005, a 44 percent increase over the previous year, according to a report released Monday by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO). The report, based on a survey of 553 respondents and conducted by...

What is the most important factor that will influence executive pay and hiring in the technology industry this coming year? Is it globalization? Data management? Business process improvement? No. None of the above. It's Google. Failure of a company to factor in how Google will influence its own bott...

The last week of 2005 brought dizzying levels of digital downloads, as owners of new MP3 players rushed to fill those devices with music, and recipients of gift cards from top sites hurried to cash in their chits. Nielsen SoundScan said 20 million tracks were downloaded during the week between Chri...

In a bid to provide more services to mid-sized enterprises in the United States, UK-based Sage Group said it will acquire Verus Financial Management for US$325 million in cash. Verus, a Nashville, Tenn.-based division of Financial Technology Ventures, specializes in providing credit-card and check p...

Texas Instruments today announced a definitive agreement to sell its sensors and controls business to a global private equity investment firm for US$3 billion in cash. Bain Capital, LLC will purchase the Attleboro, Mass. division that supplies engineered sensors and controls to the appliance, climat...

Texas Instruments today announced a definitive agreement to sell its sensors and controls business to a global private equity investment firm for US$3 billion in cash. Bain Capital, LLC will purchase the Attleboro, Mass. division that supplies engineered sensors and controls to the appliance, climat...

Texas Instruments today announced a definitive agreement to sell its sensors and controls business to a global private equity investment firm for US$3 billion in cash. Bain Capital, LLC will purchase the Attleboro, Mass. division that supplies engineered sensors and controls to the appliance, climat...

EMC Corporation yesterday said it has acquired Acxiom's information grid software for US$30 million. The companies also announced a partnership that will combine Acxiom's grid technology with EMC's portfolio of storage, information management and resource management solutions. As a key component of ...

In a move that could save it billions of dollars, IBM said it would freeze its pension plan within two years and shift more employees to beefed-up 401(k) programs. Big Blue said the shift was part of a "global strategy" of shifting retirement benefits to "the more predictable cost structure" of a 40...

Of all the current monetary units, the U.S. dollar is still the world's dominant currency. But, there are challenges facing the dollar. Economic forces at work today seem to be favoring the consolidation of currencies. With the creation of the Euro, 11 disparate currencies were merged into one monet...

The New Year has quickly brought new efforts by satellite radio providers XM Satellite and Sirius to win subscribers and grab market share in the rapidly emerging business. XM used the Consumer Electronics Show to roll out several new products, including hand-held radio players meant to make it easi...

Computer security software firm McAfee has agreed to pay a US$50 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in order to settle charges that it pumped up revenue and earnings during the dot-com craze. The fine will help McAfee settle charges that it exaggerated both sales and earnin...

Peddling pornography has always been big business on the Internet, but apparently it isn't lucrative enough for some skin merchants. Pornographers are turning to click fraud to supplement income generated by their Web sites, according to Kessler International, a cybercrime investigations firm based ...

Anti-spam software provider Mailshell and bulk e-mailer Lyris may not be a likely duo, but the two companies are working together to boost the validity of spam filtering and at the same time allow delivery of messages that might not be considered spam by some recipients. Their solution -- which allo...

The recent addition of ABC, ESPN and other Disney-owned properties to Apple's iTunes media service is just the latest move in the studio's aggressive push to increase digital delivery of its valuable content. Disney's willingness to make its content available the way consumers want it -- particularl...