Business

In 2010, Google admitted that when collecting Street View photos around the world it also collected data from unsecured wireless networks. That led to a bunch of lawsuits. Recently, U.S. Federal Judge James Ware refused to dismiss a class action lawsuit based on allegations that Google violated th...

Cisco may shed as many as 10,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of its workforce. The cuts are meant to revive profit growth; as many as 7,000 jobs could be eliminated by August. Cisco is also providing early retirement packages to about 3,000 workers who accepted buyouts. Eliminating jobs will help Cis...

Facebook users may soon be able to stream, download and share music via the social networking site with a partnership with Spotify, a Swedish music service, according to codes found by software blogger Jeff Rose. The software engineer examined a code possibly in development that users could use to d...

Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner Cable have promised to be more proactive in alerting possible copyright violators using their networks in a voluntary agreement with the music and film industries. The antipiracy model they've adopted has been pushed for some time by the Record...

I am not now -- nor have I ever been -- an online gamer. I've never even thought about sitting down in front of a Sony PlayStation, Microsoft Xbox or any other game console. And until a few days ago, I considered the idea of paying real money to buy virtual goods to spruce up ones surroundings in im...

Most businesses with which I am familiar, especially those of small to medium-size, are so caught up in day-to-day challenges that the only time they take a good look at the health of their business and the timeliness of the filing and payment of certain taxes and levies is when they review their an...

I recently heard a couple of very interesting interviews on the radio -- both with Bernie Marcus, one of the original founders of The Home Depot. They turned out to be two of the most interesting and important interviews I have heard. Marcus said that government regulation has grown so out of contro...

A major round of funding from private investors for social networking site Twitter has raised the valuation of the company to more than $7 billion, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. That's almost double from December, when it raised $200 million in a round of funding led by Kleiner P...

Microsoft has forged a deal with Baidu, China's largest search engine, to provide search functionality in English. The deal comes a year and a half after Google exited China's search market with much fanfare, announcing it could no longer stomach the censorship the government applied. By the end of ...

Nortel awarded its 6,000 patents to the winning bidder, and it wasn't Google -- it was a consortium of six mobile technology leaders: Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony. The group paid $4.5 billion in auction that took place over several days. Google set the starting figure...

Several weeks after the Sony PlayStation Network was brought to its knees by a massive security breach, the company has decided to clean house with an executive reshuffling. Among the changes: Akira Sato, chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment, and Ken Kutaragi, honorary chairman, will retire, ef...

California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law Wednesday that will require Amazon.com and other Internet retailers to collect sales tax on goods sold to California residents. Mail order laws have long held that state sales tax doesn't have to be paid by companies that do not have a presence in the sta...

Specific Media announced Wednesday that the company, in partnership with recording artist Justin Timberlake, will buy MySpace from News Corp. in hopes of revitalizing the ailing social networking site. The rumored price is around $35 million to $40 million, less than a tenth of the $580 million News...

I have been impressed with the recovery that Sprint Nextel has shown over the last few years, but now it has struck a deal with LightSquared that puts the cart way ahead of the horse. Is Sprint making a big mistake while trying to bounce back from another body blow it just took? A few years ago, Spr...

Zynga Game Network will likely file for an IPO on Thursday, based on a flurry of media reports that came out Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. Though an impending Zynga IPO has been rumored for weeks, details are now leaking out. Zynga is a leading developer of social games such as "FarmVille" ...