Business

Amazon has purchased Yap, a voice recognition startup, according to an SEC filing. The move added to speculation that Amazon is preparing a voice-command service similar to Apple's Siri or Google Android's Voice Actions. The transaction was apparently completed in September, but a public statement h...

Seven members of a massive alleged Internet fraud ring have been charged by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The ring infected more than 4 million computers worldwide with malware and rerouted online searches fraudulently to websites and ads, which then paid the ring's member...

Rumblefish and APM Music are teaming up to offer an online catalog of popular music and soundtracks to consumers looking to legally add sound to personal video content such as YouTube videos, slideshows or presentations. The partnership, announced Thursday, combines Rumblefish's experience with soci...

Several cable companies and the U.S. FCC have launched a program that will assist low-income families in getting access to broadband and low-cost computers. The initiative is part of the FCC's push to increase broadband adoption across the U.S. This particular program, in which such companies as Com...

A bipartisan trio of Senators has introduced a bill that gives states the authority to collect online sales taxes. The measure, cosponsored by Senators Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., Dick Durbin, (D-Ill., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., carves out an exception for small businesses, one of the main objections to t...

As an observer of the IT and Internet industries for several decades, I watch with great amusement as new buzzwords surface for old concepts. Not too long ago, the term "cloud computing" appeared on the scene. The technology concept behind cloud computing has been around for more than 50 years, and ...

AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo are joining forces to sell unused online ads to each other, a position designed to combat the growing market dominance of Google and Facebook. The partnership will allow the companies to buy and sell each other's online inventory of ads. The companies are interested in uppin...

Accel Partners is launching a $100 million fund to identify -- and fund -- entrepreneurs at every layer of the big data stack, in particular, those developing projects for the Apache Hadoop platform. The Accel Big Data Fund is aligned with Cloudera, which is pushing development in Hadoop. These pro...

American Express is extending its financial reach to the wild world of tech startups through a new multiyear digital commerce initiative. The $100 million program is designed to help identify and develop innovative technologies to aid the company's digital transformation and strengthen connections ...

Best Buy said Monday it would buy out Carphone Warehouse's interest in its North American Best Buy Mobile business for $1.3 billion. By purchasing the CPW stake, Best Buy is trying to shift more of its focus to mobile devices. Best Buy has asked CPW to stay on in a consultancy capacity for up to fiv...

A coalition of film studios, record labels and media entities led by the UK record industry lobby group BPI recently sent a letter to British Internet service provider BT demanding that the company block access to The Pirate Bay website. The group said that if BT doesn't act within two weeks, the ma...

Google may be taking aim at one of the few digital screens and content sources it doesn't dominate -- paid television. The search engine provider is reportedly considering offering paid cable-TV services to leverage its high-speed Internet access project under way in Kansas City, where it is plannin...

Before it went public, Groupon priced its stock at what turned out to be a highly conservative $20 dollars per share. Ha! was the market's response Friday morning, the day Groupon finally debuted on Nasdaq. Trading immediately pushed the share price up to $27.96. The low of the day was $ 25.90 and t...

Sometimes you can't win for winning. LinkedIn's stock price fell more than 10 percent Friday morning. On Thursday, LinkedIn reported higher-than-expect Q3 revenue of $139.5 million, more than doubling last year's revenue. The company also beat analyst expectations of $128 million for the quarter. Li...

One would think that after all of the publicity in recent years about insider trading and its illegality, that such a phenomenon would be a thing of the past. Not so. On Oct. 13, 2011, the hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, received the longest prison sentence to date for insider trading. A judg...