Business

The offices of Japanese Web services firm Livedoor Co. were raided by investigators Monday night, sending the company's shares into a nosedive and prompting a reassuring message from company leadership, while potentially casting a negative new light on Internet companies elsewhere. Livedoor issued a...

Portable devices helped offset weak sales of gaming consoles and drove the video game industry to record sales in the United States last year, according to a report from the NPD Group. The research firm said sales hit US$10.5 billion, up nearly 7 percent from last year and eclipsing the previous hig...

Apparently eyeing the worn pathway from enterprise technology to the consumer marketplace, Cisco Systems is said to be mulling a plan to produce electronics and related products for home use. The Financial Times reported that Cisco is on the brink of rolling out a range of Web-connected products, in...

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched a formal investigation into how tech giant IBM reported earnings and stock compensation expenses in a quarterly report nearly a year ago. The SEC had launched an informal inquiry in June of 2005, which IBM said it had been cooperating with. O...

Boeing announced plans to build three satellites and ground systems for Mobile Satellite Ventures under a deal worth US$500 million to $1 billion -- the most impressive contract win for its commercial satellite division in nearly a decade. The huge price tag -- the largest for satellites since 1997 ...

Microsoft Research India announced plans this week to expand its operations over the next 18 months. The company intends to bolster teams in existing research areas and to create a new research group for cryptography and security. "Microsoft Research India continues to identify research areas that a...

Saying even its smaller business customers need more powerful search solutions, Google is broadening its menu of enterprise-search appliances to include two larger versions of the Google Mini. The day before the one-year anniversary of the launch of the Mini, Google's first search appliance designed...

Betting that consumer demand for high-end electronics devices such as plasma TVs and digital cameras will continue to surge, Sharp and Fujitsu each announced major investments that will result in manufacturing capacity being quickly brought up to speed. Sharp said it would spend about US$1.75 billio...

Seeking to buy its way to a stronger position in the emerging video search and download marketplace, America Online said it would acquire video search firm Truveo, Inc. Terms of the deal -- AOL's fifth acquisition in a year -- were not disclosed. Truveo, which is privately held, was founded in Janua...

Mercury Interactive Corporation on Monday signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Systinet Corporation for US$105 million in cash. Mercury is in the business technology optimization (BTO) software business. Systinet is a provider of service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance and ...

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who spent much of 2005 buying up Internet properties, may be poised to invest as much as US$1 billion into developing high-speed wireless Internet connectivity through the DirecTV division of News Corp. The DirecTV effort, which Murdoch said it would reveal in full in com...

What is the most important factor that will influence executive pay and hiring in the technology industry this coming year? Is it globalization? Data management? Business process improvement? No. None of the above. It's Google. Failure of a company to factor in how Google will influence its own bott...

The last week of 2005 brought dizzying levels of digital downloads, as owners of new MP3 players rushed to fill those devices with music, and recipients of gift cards from top sites hurried to cash in their chits. Nielsen SoundScan said 20 million tracks were downloaded during the week between Chri...

In a bid to provide more services to mid-sized enterprises in the United States, UK-based Sage Group said it will acquire Verus Financial Management for US$325 million in cash. Verus, a Nashville, Tenn.-based division of Financial Technology Ventures, specializes in providing credit-card and check p...

Texas Instruments today announced a definitive agreement to sell its sensors and controls business to a global private equity investment firm for US$3 billion in cash. Bain Capital, LLC will purchase the Attleboro, Mass. division that supplies engineered sensors and controls to the appliance, climat...