Business

Cable television's big edge on its satellite rivals may be eroding a bit, if DirecTV's plan to offer on-demand programming works out. On Thursday, DirecTV said it is testing an on-demand service for movies and other TV programming and planning a formal launch of the VOD service by the end of June. D...

In an early sign of the expanded presence Google intends to have in the online ad world now that it has closed on DoubleClick, the search giant Thursday launched a Web advertising management tool aimed at smaller publishers. The company formally announced Google Ad Manager after several months in te...

The relationship between Activision and Gibson Guitar went off-key Tuesday. The two companies had until now worked in concert with one another after the hugely successful release of the third installment of the "Guitar Hero" series. Recently, however, Activision filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Cour...

Net neutrality would make it harder for the movie industry to fight piracy, Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, told attendees at the movie industry's annual ShoWest convention in Las Vegas. Net neutrality is "a clever name," Glickman said. "But at the end of...

Electronic Arts has issued a hostile $2 billion tender offer for rival video game firm Take-Two Interactive Software. The offer represents a 64 percent premium over Take-Two's closing stock price on Feb. 15, the last day of trading before EA issued a revised proposal to the New York-based company. T...

Time Warner's AOL will buy the social network Bebo for $850 million in cash, acquiring a worldwide user base of 40 million as well as a developer-friendly platform. Bebo was known to be shopping for a buyer, but the move came as something of a surprise because the social networking site already has ...

Have you watched the news lately? "Credit markets deteriorate." "Housing foreclosures at 25 year high." "Unemployment on the rise." "Weakest U.S. dollar in decades." "Consumer confidence declining." It's pretty clear there could be some nasty surprises for businesses, and marketers in particular, i...

The House Judiciary Committee held a panel hearing on the issue of net neutrality Tuesday, hearing testimony from such diverse interests as a rock band, an abortion rights advocacy group and the Christian Coalition of America. The unlikely trio converged on the Hill to call for legislation that woul...

TiVo and Google have struck a deal that will enable the digital video recorder maker's users to watch Web-based YouTube videos on their television sets. The service will be available later this year to consumers who own its Series 3 devices connected to the Internet through a broadband link, TiVo sa...

The European Commission has given its long-awaited blessing to Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick. Coming nearly a month ahead of an established April 2 deadline, the decision rested on the EC's findings that the merger would not hurt consumers or im...

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said his media company won't get into a bidding war with Microsoft for the right to take over Web portal Yahoo. During a keynote speech at the Bear Stearns Media Conference, Murdoch suggested the $44.6 billion offer Microsoft made for Yahoo was too rich for his com...

The stock price for Texas Instruments dropped nearly 6 percent -- and sent a minor shock wave through its biggest customer's stock -- on news that the company had lowered its profit forecast on Monday. Dallas-based TI, which supplies chips to about half the wireless handsets worldwide, saw its share...

Microsoft's Xbox price-cutting campaign is going global, though it's not clear whether U.S. consumers will be in line for any additional discounts. Bidding to break ahead of the pack vying for next-generation gaming console dominance, Microsoft confirmed Monday it cut the price of its Xbox 360 devic...

Microsoft's chief software architect said the company will not rush to integrate its Web advertising system with that of possible merger partner Yahoo. Ray Ozzie, the Lotus Notes inventor and Groove Networks founder who took over the software architect role from Bill Gates in 2006, told the Financia...

A behemoth on the semiconductor scene just got a little bigger. Chip manufacturer LSI has acquired the hard disk drive business of Germany-based Infineon Technologies for an undisclosed amount. The buyout, announced Monday, came a little less than a year after the former LSI Logic had acquired Agere...