Business

Facebook has apparently taken its massive user base and immense popularity to heart. The company reportedly is dictating to Wall Street underwriters what it will pay in fees for its $5 billion initial public offering. Typically, these fees would range from 3 percent to 7 percent of the offering. How...

Amazon has moved to acquire Kiva Systems, a maker of robotic equipment that services warehouses. The purchase will be Amazon's biggest since it bought Zappos.com in 2009. Amazon agreed to pay $775 million for Kiva, which creates equipment, handling technology and software that helps large-scale vend...

Normally, the resolution of a video game's story line -- even one as popular as "Mass Effect 3" -- would not be news outside the gaming sector. In this case, however, some fans are so disgruntled that they've lodged a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that Electronic Arts and BioW...

Sanford C. Bernstein has downgraded Sprint Nextel to underperform from market perform, citing concerns it won't sell enough iPhones to pay for its "punishing" commitment to Apple. Worse, from Sprint's perspective, is that there's a strong chance Sprint may have to declare bankruptcy at some point, B...

Despite 17 percent growth in monthly unique users at the top news sites in 2011, revenue remained an issue, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, which cites data from Nielsen Online. Online advertising grew by 23 percent in 2011, but just fiv...

Sprint has canceled the 15-year agreement it inked with LightSquared last July to build out and license a 4G network. LightSquared was to have used this network, together with its own infrastructure, to launch its service. The agreement would have been beneficial to Sprint as well, as it had hoped t...

Cisco Systems has revealed plans to acquire NDS Group, paying $5 billion for the video software company as part of an effort to increase investment in its software and video services. NDS software ensures that paid digital content gets to appropriate set-top boxes, smart TVs and consumer gadgets, an...

The Court of Appeal for Ontario recently considered whether there was a cause of action for the invasion of personal privacy in Jones v.Tsige. The case involved two bank employees, Sandra Jones and Winne Tsige, who worked at two different branches of the same bank. The respondent, Tsige, was in a r...

Encyclopedia Britannica will switch to an all-digital format, bringing its 244-year printing history to a close. It's time to concentrate on expanding coverage for digital consumers rather than continuing to print the heavy, relatively expensive volumes, said the Chicago-based company that makes the...

Comcast has grown from a small cable television company in the 1990s to the largest conglomerate in the space, all thanks to Brian Roberts and his father Ralph Roberts. It was a real bootstrapping, entrepreneurial, family-run company that did many great things over the years and helped to transform ...

Dell is acquiring network-security and data-protection tool provider SonicWall for an estimated $1 billion to $1.5 billion. This is the latest in a series of acquisitions Dell has made in recent months. It has acquired Force 10, Perot Systems and SecureWorks. All of these companies focus on differen...

In a move that could be seen as a last gasp, embattled 4G LTE developer LightSquared announced this week that it had hired lawyer Theodore Olson to launch a legal battle against the FCC. This follows the Federal Communications Commission pulling the plug on the tentatively approved 4G LTE network t...

Yahoo on Monday launched a lawsuit against Facebook, claiming the social network infringed 10 patents relating to online social networking and advertising. The move garnered a significant amount of criticism. Its timing comes just before Facebook is slotted to make its initial public offering, a...

Even before Google launched its new privacy policy earlier this month, consolidating separate privacy policies for more than 60 applications, legal issues had surfaced. Now, attorneys general from more than 31 States have accused Google of violating privacy laws because of complaints from users that...

Intel is rumored to be considering entering the pay-television service market. The chipmaker reportedly has reached out to media companies and cable channels as part of its research. The service would be based on a Web-connected set-top box that could offer both streaming TV and video-on-demand prog...