Business

A coalition of companies, foundations and governmental bodies has launched the Alliance for Affordable Internet Access to create the conditions for open, competitive and innovative broadband markets in developing nations. The alliance "will undertake a blend of international advocacy and research, c...

Twitter filed documents with the SEC for its initial public offering, giving investors a first glimpse of its financials on Thursday. Trading under the ticker symbol "TWTR," it aims to raise $1 billion in its IPO. Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has grown from a microblogging novelty to a social n...

U.S. law enforcement officials have shut down Silk Road, the online marketplace that allegedly facilitated the anonymous sale of illegal drugs as well as illicit services such as murder for hire. FBI officials also on Tuesday arrested the site's alleged founder, 29-year-old Ross Ulbricht, at a publi...

No one expects a free lunch. So when people use a free webmail service, many assume they will be bombarded with advertising. Why? Obviously, because the webmail services make money by commercializing the content of the webmail! Actually when you sign up for free webmail, and click "I Accept," or som...

Three major Microsoft shareholders are reportedly pushing the board of directors to have the company's founder, Bill Gates, step down from his role as chairman. The push comes at an inopportune time for Microsoft, as it is currently searching for a CEO to take over for newly retired CEO Steve Ballme...

Scribd announced Tuesday that HarperCollins has become the first major publisher to join its monthly e-book subscription service. Scribd launched the e-book service earlier this year with a handful of smaller publishers including RosettaBooks and Sourcebooks. Since then, it has grown more than 60 pe...

To one who has been predicting the demise of print media for over five years, it might seem odd that such a techie as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos would buy The Washington Post. Why, even this past November, Bezos said in an interview, "one thing I'm certain about: There won't be printed newspapers in 20 y...

After three years of wrangling with Google over its alleged anticompetitive business practices, the EU has suggested there may be some light at the end of the tunnel. "We have reached a key moment in this case," EC Vice President Joaquin Almunia, who is responsible for competition policy, said at a ...

In AMC's Breaking Bad, high school chemistry teacher Walter White, although starting out as a protagonist, descends into depravity and ruin. Clearly, not all high school chemistry teachers are Walter Whites. Similarly, not all scientists, innovators and patent owners are evil. Yet Congress, at the u...

Ford has announced the acquisition of Livio Connect, a 5-year-old Michigan company that wields influence in the car connectivity field out of proportion to its size. That's partly because Livio's technology is used by some major players and partly because Livio's Keys marketplace is a B2B exchange w...

Google may have breached federal and California wiretapping laws by machine-scanning Gmail messages in order to deliver targeted advertising, U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh ruled on Thursday. As a result of the ruling, a class-action suit against Google over the issue can now proceed. The suit, whi...

Google announced Wednesday that it is opening its Google Shopping Express service to shoppers in the entire San Francisco Bay Area, marking the official launch and first big expansion of the company's same-day delivery service. Google began testing the retail delivery service earlier this year among...

eBay on Thursday announced that it is acquiring payment startup Braintree for $800 million in cash. eBay will combine Braintree, which provides technology for processing payments on the Web and mobile devices, with its PayPal payments division. Braintree expects to process some $12 billion in paymen...

The BlackBerry news of last Friday was bleak, with a billion-dollar loss and the cutting of 40 percent of its workforce. It looked as though BlackBerry was crashing and burning. Even though this was terrible news, I knew it had several different options. It was up to the company to decide which dire...

RealNetworks on Tuesday announced RealPlayer Cloud, a new service that allows users to upload video files to the company's servers and then view and share them across devices. Billed by the company as the first integrated video player and cloud service, RealPlayer Cloud automatically transforms vide...