Business

EU regulators said they would expand their ongoing probe into the privacy issues first raised about search engine giant Google to include other major search tools. The decision of the European Commission's data watchdog group to broaden its probe into the privacy implications of rapidly evolving sea...

This past May, the country of Estonia was hit hard by what its authorities called a "virtual war." This war took the form of an attack on the country's computer infrastructure. Many governmental and commercial sites were hit. The attacks on the country's commerce seemed to focus on the country's med...

Have you ever walked into a big box store and seen scores of half-full shopping carts scattered throughout the aisles? It would seem unlikely, but for e-commerce retailers, abandoned carts are more common than you think. Shopping cart abandonment has existed since the dawn of the e-cart, but how can...

Earlier this month, it looked for a while as though there might be another wave of multi-jurisdictional investigations against Microsoft reminiscent of the antitrust saga that began in 1998. Google had been complaining -- first behind the scenes, then publicly -- about the lack of access for third-p...

Regulators in Europe have given the green light to a planned Internet joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.: a Web video repository seen as a competitor to Google's YouTube. The yet-to-be-named venture -- first announced in March following weeks of speculation -- is expected to launch s...

The two largest phone companies in Canada are in talks for a possible merger that could fend off U.S.-backed private equity buyers as the wave of consolidation that reshaped the U.S. telecommunications landscape appears poised to hit north of the border. BCE, the largest phone provider in Canada, co...

The three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court has upheld a ruling that grants extensive new privacy protections for e-mail users. It is an ambitious decision -- said to be the first for the Circuit Courts -- and one that is almost surely headed to the Supreme Court for review. In Warshak v. Unite...

A computer failure at United Airlines prevented the takeoff of all the air carrier's flights worldwide for about two hours on Wednesday. Flights scheduled to depart between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. EDT were grounded, causing backups and delays around the globe. Twenty-four domestic flights were canceled, ...

News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch has offered to swap the wildly popular social networking site MySpace in exchange for a stake in portal-in-flux Yahoo. Murdoch reportedly approached Yahoo with the offer of giving the portal ownership of MySpace in exchange for a 30 percent ownership stake of the com...

Shares of Best Buy slid by more than 5 percent Tuesday after the electronics retail giant posted lower earnings and moderated its outlook for the rest of the year, citing a less profitable mix of hot-selling products. Best Buy's profit for its first quarter was $192 million, or 39 cents per share, 1...

Terry Semel resigned from his CEO post at Yahoo late Monday, stepping aside to let cofounder Jerry Yang take the helm as the portal looks to keep shareholders happy, regain its early dot-com glory and better compete with rival Google. Semel arrived at the Internet company in 2001 with high hopes tha...

LG Electronics has filed a countersuit against Hitachi alleging that the firm has infringed seven of its patents relating to plasma display panel technologies. The suit comes in response to similar accusations made by Hitachi against LG Electronics in April -- namely, that LG was improperly using Hi...

Police in the UK have broken up a Web-based child pornography and pedophilia network, rescuing 31 children in the process and charging some 700 people worldwide with crimes. Two hundred of the suspects and 15 of the children were located in Britain, according to the UK's Child Exploitation and Onlin...

Blockbuster will offer high-definition movies in the Blu-ray format in all of its stores, the company said, favoring Sony's approach for next-generation DVDs and dealing a blow to the rival HD DVD format. The movie rental giant will continue to offer consumers the option of getting HD-DVD movies thr...

As e-commerce momentum continues to build, many retailers find themselves enjoying success beyond their expectations. With success comes growth, and with growth comes stress on a retailer's information technology underpinnings. Where small and medium-sized retailers enjoy a rich array of commercial ...