Articles by Jeff Meisner

The Bush Administration pushed through new rules last week that seek to end Internet gambling.The new regulations, issued by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve system, require banks, credit card companies and wire transfer companies to establish a process to stop payments for settling online bets The rules are an outgrowth of a law pa...

Beleaguered server and software maker Sun Microsystems said Friday that it will lay off as many as 6,000 employees, or 18 percent of its worldwide workforce, over the next year Sun's announcement appears to confirm fears that the economic turmoil that has overtaken the financial services and manufacturing sector has now spread to the technology sec...

YouTube will begin selling advertising on YouTube search results pages, the company announced Wednesday The move appears to be the latest attempt by search engine giant Google to monetize the popular video content site, which it acquired for US$1.65 billion two years ago. Google calls the new YouTube feature "Sponsored Videos."

Microsoft and Verizon Wireless are said to be close to a deal that would make Windows Live Search the default search engine on Verizon handsets and expand the number of Verizon devices powered by the Windows Mobile operating system News of an impending deal between the software giant and the soon-to-be No. 1 wireless operator was first reported in ...

Just two days after regional consumer electronics chain Circuit City declared bankruptcy, Best Buy has slashed its earnings forecast for the upcoming holiday season and much of 2009 The retail giant forecast fiscal 2009 earnings of about US$2.30 to $2.90 per share, down from a prior forecast of $3.25 to $3.40 per share. Best Buy now expects annual ...

While other consumer electronics makers are headed for a rough holiday season, two standouts in the industry are expected to rise above the rest -- Apple and Dell A survey by ChangeWave concluded that the U.S. is on the brink of experiencing a "massive breakdown in consumer spending" just in time for the holiday season....

Four years after Microsoft paid US$1.6 billion to Sun Microsystems to settle an antitrust and patent suit, the once-bitter rivals are teaming up on Internet search Under an agreement announced Monday, Sun will offer Microsoft's MSN Search toolbar when users download Java Runtime Environment, or JRE....

The Federal Communications Commission gave its blessing to two large wireless deals Wednesday The larger of the two is Verizon Communications' US$28.1 billion buyout of Alltel; Verizon will pay $5.9 billion and assume $22.2 billion of Alltel's debt....

Search engine giant Google has walked away from a proposed ad-sharing deal with Internet portal Yahoo after the U.S. Department of Justice made it clear that it would seek to block the agreement in court Google's decision is a profound setback for Yahoo, which has struggled to maintain its share in the online advertising market. The proposed deal, ...

Search engine powerhouses Google and Yahoo have offered to significantly scale back the depth of their proposed online ad-sharing deal in an attempt to gain the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice, according to press reports The proposed deal, first announced last June, would allow Yahoo to display ads from Google and then take a portion of ...

Consumers will get a break from having to wrestle with tough-to-open parcels this holiday season with the advent of "frustration-free" packaging from Amazon.com The online retail giant will try to cut down on the sheer volume of packaging materials used to ship purchases from the site. The effort begins with products from 19 manufacturers, includin...

As the U.S. presidential election season winds down, a handful of political polls that include mobile phone users show Democrat Barack Obama beating Republican John McCain by a substantially wider margin than polls that do not include cell phone users In polls that extended to cell phones, Obama beat McCain by an average of 10 points versus just 5 ...

An online ad-sharing deal between Google and Yahoo may be on the verge of collapse Talks between the two Internet search powerhouses and the U.S. Department of Justice have stalled, prompting Google and Yahoo to consider walking away from the proposed agreement, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday....

Just one day after notifying an Internet registrar notorious for allowing massive spamming that it would terminate its registrar accreditation, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has given the registrar a temporary stay of execution ICANN sent a letter to EstDomains on Tuesday, informing the company that its ICANN accreditation...

Motorola announced a new round of layoffs as it reported a 15 percent decrease in revenue during the third quarter on Thursday. "Approximately 3,000 employees will be affected globally across all businesses and functions," company spokesperson Maya Komadina told the E-Commerce Times....

In its continuing effort to reinvent itself, struggling wireless phone maker Motorola will cut more jobs and focus on designing handheld devices that run Google's new open source Android operating system, according to the Wall Street Journal The company will pare down the number of operating systems for which it currently creates mobile phones to j...

The Christian Science Monitor will cease the weekday print edition of its award-winning newspaper in April after a century of continuous publication. The plan is to move the weekday publication to an online-only format while rolling out a new weekend print magazine....

Search engine giant Google has settled two copyright lawsuits over its Google Book Search program for US$125 million In two separate lawsuits, the New York City-based Author's Guild and McGraw-Hill sued Google in 2005, alleging it had violated copyright laws through its scanning and online distribution of copyrighted and out-of-print books....

Microsoft announced plans Monday at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles to launch a large-scale cloud computing initiative that could drastically change the way it develops and sells software Cloud computing, an emerging trend in the technology industry, employs vast computer and server networks to deliver and host applications an...

Cable television provider Cox Communications plans to roll out its own cellular network some time in 2009 in an effort to take market share from telephone companies and wireless operators The Atlanta-based company has already spent US$550 million to acquire wireless spectrum so it can offer cellular service to its customers. That spectrum covers At...