Business

These days Apple reminds me a lot of the inscription found on the James Farley Post Office in New York City: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." If Apple had a credo, the aphorism on its Cupertino headquarters ...

Amazon has announced a dramatic upswing in e-book sales. For the first half of 2010 it sold three times as many Kindle books as it did in the first half of 2009. For the full second quarter, it reported sales of 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books sold. Over the past month, it sold 180 Ki...

Motorola will sell the majority of its network equipment business to Nokia Siemens Networks in a $1.2 billion deal that is generally seen as a positive move for both companies as they pursue their respective business strategies. Motorola gets a much-needed infusion of cash, plus the freedom to focus...

eBay has been slammed with a lawsuit alleging that the e-commerce giant infringes on six patents with its PayPal, Bill Me Later, Shopping.com and StubHub services. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware by XPRT Ventures, veers from the typical pattern of patent disputes. For starters...

Zuora, a provider of on-demand subscription billing and payment services, was cofounded in March 2008 jointly by Tien Tzuo, who serves as its CEO; Cheng Zou and K.V. Rao. It received $6.5 million in Series A funding later that month and $15 million in Series B funding in October of 2008. It has been...

Zuora, a provider of on-demand subscription billing and payment services, was cofounded in March 2008 jointly by Tien Tzuo, who serves as its CEO; Cheng Zou and K.V. Rao. It received $6.5 million in Series A funding later that month and $15 million in Series B funding in October of 2008. It has been...

Zuora, a provider of on-demand subscription billing and payment services, was cofounded in March 2008 jointly by Tien Tzuo, who serves as its CEO; Cheng Zou and K.V. Rao. It received $6.5 million in Series A funding later that month and $15 million in Series B funding in October of 2008. It has been...

Facebook has been blindsided by a lawsuit that could have triggered an upheaval in its ownership structure, or at least a massive legal fight -- if it had been filed a few months ago, that is. Still, the modicum of legal uncertainty created by the case must be giving top executives at the social net...

Google has reportedly invested a significant sum of money -- between US$100 million and $200 million -- in social games company Zynga in order to build out a Google Games offering for the search engine giant. The investment, which was reportedly made by Google and not Google Ventures, is a highly st...

Venture capitalists style themselves as the stewards of entrepreneurship, offering cash to young Edisons seeking both fame and fortune. Stunning returns for early investments in companies like Google kept the dream alive for egocentric investors and entrepreneurs alike. And yet like a Greek tragedy...

China has renewed Google's Internet Content Provider license, according to David Drummond, the company's senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer. With this step behind it now, Google will be able to continue to provide Web search and local products to users in China. T...

Comcast's pending acquisition of General Electric's NBC Universal was put under the microscope again Thursday as the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and The Internet of the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a field hearing to investigate the proposed d...

Netflix has expanded its library of streaming movie titles -- and will be making them available to customers much faster -- through a new agreement it has inked with distribution house Relativity Media. As part of the deal, Relativity's movies can be streamed to Netflix's customer base months after ...

Google has announced plans to buy ITA Software, a major provider of airline travel software, for $700 million. ITA is a prominent player in its space -- it counts among its clients virtually all of the major Web travel information and booking providers, including such airlines as American and Contin...

Amazon.com plans to acquire online retailer Woot.com, pioneer of the "flash sale" concept. No financial terms were officially disclosed when the deal was announced on Wednesday, though the blog TechCrunch reported that the sale was made for around $110 million in cash. Woot will operate as an indepe...