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eBay business unit PayPal revolutionized the payments industry and catapulted e-commerce when it emerged as a credit card processor for person-to-person transactions on auction sites. Today, about half of PayPal's payments volume is from credit cards, but the service also allows consumers to registe...

Boosted by consumer demand for electronics, worldwide semiconductor sales rose to record levels in 2006, the Semiconductor Industry Association said in a report released Monday. Global sales of semiconductors reached $247.7 billion last year, an increase of 8.9 percent over 2005, the SIA said. The y...

In a wide-ranging, sometimes forceful and frequently upbeat e-mail to employees, Dell founder Michael Dell said he doesn't forget what was involved in creating a company and making it succeed. The e-mail, made public Saturday by a Texas newspaper, was sent on Friday, the same day Dell returned as CE...

Apple Inc. has reached a settlement with the company that manages the Beatles' intellectual property holdings, ending a trademark lawsuit and possibly paving the way for Beatles songs to be sold through the iTunes Music Store. On Monday, Apple announced the pact with The Beatles' music publisher App...

New technological advances, as well as legal and regulatory changes, are tearing down long-standing barriers between industries. Digital voice, data and multimedia content delivery operations are converging with both fixed and wireless telecommunications services. In addition, a host of telecoms, ca...

There seems to be a real debate going on in many of organizations about how to structure search engine marketing efforts. Fueled, perhaps, by an underlying dissatisfaction with their vendors and the increasing perception that their effort isn't well coordinated and shouldn't be so siloed, many compa...

On the same day that founder Michael Dell returned as CEO of his namesake firm, a class-action lawsuit was filed claiming Dell had used rebates from its main business supplier Intel of about $1 billion to inflate its profits. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Austin, Texas. Dell has s...

Media conglomerate Viacom demanded on Friday that Google's video service YouTube remove from its Web pages as many as 100,000 video clips containing copyrighted material. The two sides had been negotiating a licensing agreement that would allow Viacom-owned content on the YouTube site when talks bro...

A record holiday season pushed Amazon to nearly $4 billion in sales in the fourth quarter, but a heavier reliance on electronics sales, continued promotions and shipping discounts ate into profits, forcing executives to defend some of its recent moves into new markets. Profit plummeted 50 percent fr...

As the Enron story gradually begins to fade from the news, one has to wonder if such an economic debacle could happen again. As a result of Enron, WorldCom and other corporate scandals, there are now former top executives from several major corporations who, since they probably won't live long enoug...

For the past three years, a Chicago consulting firm has assumed a Grinch-like role with its annual estimate of worker productivity losses attributable to the Super Bowl. Those losses, though, may actually be gains for many businesses, according to the firm's top executive. Money lost due to producti...

Following several quarters of disappointing earnings reports and a fall to the No. 2 spot in global PC sales, Dell on Wednesday reinstated Michael Dell as CEO of the computer company he created in his dorm room at the University of Texas more than 20 years ago. The move comes with the immediate resi...

The Microsoft executive who led the company's Zune product launch, among other things, is retiring from the company, officials announced Wednesday. Bryan Lee, corporate vice president of Microsoft's entertainment business, plans to leave the company in the next several weeks to pursue personal inter...

Google further solidified its paid search lead in the fourth quarter, nearly tripling its profit amid a 38 percent jump in revenue as the search giant continued to burnish its reputation as the can't-miss Internet company. Google secured net income for the quarter of $1.03 billion, or $3.29 per shar...

With the December announcement that NDS, a provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, acquired Jungo, a residential gateway software provider, we're continuing to witness consolidation in the market to deliver complete end-to-end access and service-provider solutions. The purchase also rea...