Business

Federal authorities have broken up a massive piracy ring that they say was capable of producing millions of counterfeit music and software CDs. Three California men face a range of charges after being indicted by a federal grand jury in San Francisco on counterfeiting charges. The charges resulted f...

Eyeing a possible three-way partnership that could dramatically alter the Web portal space overnight, search giant Google and cable company Comcast are reportedly talking about acquiring a minority stake in America Online. Under the reported deal, the two companies would buy a minority stake in AOL ...

Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN have agreed to work to make their instant messaging platforms more compatible, a bid to set aside competitive differences to tackle the continued dominance of America Online's own chat platform. The companies said their agreement represented the first time two major IM pro...

In a move to attract more small business customers, Microsoft is launching a subsidy program to allow this growing business demographic to receive credits toward consulting services when they purchase Microsoft software. Small businesses that purchase a minimum of five copies of Microsoft Office or ...

RealNetworks and Microsoft have reached a set of agreements to end one of the most bitter private antitrust matters in the technology sector, with RealNetworks receiving as much as US$761 million in cash and marketing considerations for its music and games services from the software giant and the tw...

Looking to beef up its PayPal online payment service and enhance its reputation with online merchants outside of its online auction kingdom in particular, eBay said it would acquire the payment gateway system of security company VeriSign. EBay said its PayPal unit, which it took over in a US$1.5 bil...

In a case seen boosting the credibility and profile of blogs as sources of news and opinion, the Delaware Supreme Court this week found that four bloggers accused of defamation had the right to remain anonymous. The court ruled that a lower court was wrong in ordering an Internet service provider to...

Pressing forward on its private anti-trust lawsuit against leading chipmaker Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has subpoenaed records from several Intel customers, including major PC makers and smaller vendors. AMD hopes the records will help bolster its argument that Intel used its market share ...

It's party time in blogland. So say analysts in the wake of two successive blog-related acquisitions this week. First, yesterday AOL said it would acquire Weblogs, Inc. Today, Verisign said it has purchased Weblogs.com. VeriSign purchased the company and its ping service from Scripting News in a US$...

The upcoming turning of the calendar to January of 2006 brings more than a new year. It also marks the start of what some say is the most sweeping demographics change to hit the American workforce since World War II. That's because during 2006, the first of the Baby Boomer generation will turn 60 ye...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission took action against spyware this week by asking a U.S. District Court Judge to halt an operation that allegedly plagued users who clicked for free file-sharing software with performance-slowing, private-information-gathering software that also altered search results...

Shareholders of long distance provider MCI overwhelmingly approved a plan for Verizon Communications to buy the company for US$8.4 billion, one of the final hurdles for the major telecom merger. MCI said 88 percent of its shareholders voted in favor of the merger, despite attempts by some investors ...

Dell computer has officially opened what it calls its largest, most advanced manufacturing plant in North Carolina, a move meant to underscore the company's commitment to operating in the United States but one that has already created its share of controversy. Dell opened the 750,000-square-foot fac...

Sprint Nextel has filed suit against Vonage Holdings and other voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) startups, claiming those companies infringed on patents the telecommunications company holds for delivering VoIP traffic across networks. In addition to Vonage, the action filed by Sprint Nextel in U.S

Sun Microsystems and Google today announced a multi-year deal to promote each other's software, a deal seen by many as the possible groundwork for a direct attack on Microsoft's market dominance in the desktop productivity software space. Under the terms, financial terms of which were not disclosed,...