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Investor worry that the oil supply to the United States could be disrupted heading into the long holiday weekend reverberated on Wall Street Thursday, when stocks went sharply lower. Oil prices were up more than 3 percent Thursday after gaining 4 percent on Wednesday when the U.S. announced a surpri...

Microsoft's long-rumored push deeper into the search-engine business officially kicked off Thursday when the company unveiled an upgraded search "portal" it says will return better results. The company also did away with paid inclusion and suggested that sweeping technology improvements to the overa...

Stock markets reacted favorably after the Federal Open Market Committee boosted interest rates by a quarter point and issued a statement that seemed to indicate gradual future increases were in the offing. The Fed did what most were expecting when it raised its target rate to 1.25 percent, the first...

Hoping a narrow focus on product development and customer service will help it turn itself around, Nortel Networks sold most of its major manufacturing plants to Flextronics, which will make Nortel's hardware on an outsourcing basis. Nortel said the sale, which involves plants in Canada and Brazil, ...

Companies jostling for top billing in the crowded Internet search space are spending more and more money on pay-per-click sites. In addition to investing in search engine advertising, many companies are delving into search engine optimization to build the volume of traffic to their sites. By 2005, a...

All economy watchers have turned their gaze to the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee today and tomorrow as the central bank weighs how much to boost interest rates in an effort to stem inflation without squelching the economic recovery. Most economists expect the Fed to hike the overnight lendin...

An unusual Web virus that was spread to user computers through infected Web site servers might be a Trojan capable of sending financial information back to the attacker. Microsoft said it helped law enforcement agencies identify and shut down the Russia-based site where the attacking code -- known a...

To anyone who runs a small company, raising capital might seem like an overwhelming task. Venture capital companies usually want a big piece of your pie if they are to invest in your business. Often, this means that you have to give up control of the business you worked so hard to start. Financial i...

Oil prices marked their largest one-week price drop in three months after a work stoppage at key Norwegian oil fields was resolved on Friday. Crude prices fell 41 cents a barrel to US$37.52 on the New York Mercantile Exchange and fell nearly 4 percent for the week. Oil was trading for $42 a barrel, ...

Hitachi and NEC announced Friday that they are joining forces to develop routers and switches for networks of telecommunications carriers, government and public sectors, and large enterprises. The joint venture will be formally established in October. The router market is currently dominated by Cisc...

Salesforce.com soared on its first day of public trading Wednesday as the second-most hotly anticipated technology IPO of the year -- behind only Google's still-to-come initial public offering -- gained 56 percent and valued the company at US$1.7 billion. Salesforce.com's strong first-day gains came...

The chief executive of Network Associates quashed speculation Tuesday that his company is in talks to be acquired by Microsoft, cutting into earlier gains made by the stock, which still managed to close up nearly 4 percent. Shares in the Santa Clara, California-based company ended off their best lev...

MasterCard International said it would launch an aggressive campaign against identity theft schemes that use phony Web sites to collect personal information from Internet users. The credit card company said it tapped NameProtect, a digital fraud-detection company, to scour the Web for so-called "phi...

In its fourth quarter and as a result of higher demand for its handhelds and smartphones, PalmOne posted its first profit in its short history as a standalone company. PalmOne, created last year when Palm separated its hardware and software units, said it brought in US$267.3 million in the quarter e...

IBM computers and Intel processors run the bulk of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers, according to an annual ranking, which also found the performance of the top machines increasing quickly. IBM extended its lead in the latest top-500 list and can now claim ties to 44.8 percent of the sys...