Articles by Jim Offner

Google shares dropped nearly 5 percent in the wake of a report by research firm comScore that pointed to a flattening in clicks on the site's ads comScore reported flat year-to-year performance in Google's paid ad clicks for January -- its 532 million clicks actually decreased 0.3 percent. This likely was the "primary catalyst" behind Google's most...

Television networks are still figuring out how to corral the profit potential of the digital video recorder, and ABC is the latest player to make a move The Disney-owned network will offer programs free to Cox Communications cable subscribers who have Cox's video-on-demand service. Atlanta-based Cox is the third-largest cable TV company in the U.S....

Another lawsuit against Microsoft reportedly has received the go-ahead to proceed. This time, a federal judge in Seattle approved a class action suit against the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant over alleged marketing claims that various computers labeled as "Vista Capable" actually were not suited to the new-generation operating system The suit...

Businesses have data storage issues -- but so do individuals. The former problem is being addressed; the latter is a relatively untapped market. That is likely the thinking behind EMC's acquisition of Pi EMC, a Hopkinton, Mass.-based storage vendor, is acquiring privately held Pi, a Seattle-based software and services developer, to service the grow...

Shares of Georgia-based data-services provider ChoicePoint jumped by nearly half Thursday over their previous closing price after the firm announced that UK-based publisher and Lexis Nexis owner Reed Elsevier is buying it for US$4.1 billion ChoicePoint stock jumped by 43.26 percent, to $48.22 by midday on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock, whi...

A US$2.2 billion deal 3Com had been planning involving a private-equity group and a Chinese telecommunications firm apparently fell apart Wednesday over security concerns 3Com, a Marlborough, Mass.-based network equipment manufacturer, had agreed in September to accept an offer of $5.30 per share from Boston-based Bain Capital Partners and Huawei T...

High-definition video enthusiasts are going to be looking at a Blu-ray world That outlook was assured Tuesday when Toshiba officially backed away from the HD DVD format against Sony's heavily fortified Blu-ray technology....

The International Olympic Committee reportedly has ruled that competing athletes will be allowed to blog from the Beijing Olympic Games this summer. This is certainly a positive step, but not enough, according to experts who insist that blogging has a rightful place at any major political or sporting event The IOC's blessing on blogging does come w...

It's not exactly Amazon.com's business model, but Borders Group appears to be at least borrowing a page from the Web-based book and music retailer by offering digital downloads Borders, the second-largest book retailer in the U.S., on Wednesday, announced it is opening the first of 14 new concept stores that it will launch this year as part of a re...

Sun Microsystems is acquiring Germany-based virtualization software providerInnotek and, with it, its increasingly popular open source x86 virtualization product VirtualBox. The deal comes on the heels of Sun's recent purchase of open source database developer MySQL for US$1 billion VirtualBox, which has clocked more than 4 million downloads since ...

Dell has added another member to its growing family of acquisitions, although this latest addition already had the Dell pedigree, in a sense The Round Rock, Texas-based computer maker said Tuesday it had agreed to buy Austin, Texas-based e-mail services providerMessageOne for about US$155 million in cash....

Sony Ericsson has debuted a new handset, the Xperia X1 -- its first to operate on the Windows Mobile operating system Microsoft announced the collaboration as the Mobile World Congress got under way in Barcelona, Spain....

Amazon.com's new stock buyback program and its newly stated goals to retire outstanding debt appear to be a good fit for a company that seems to be in an aggressive mode, according to analysts "It's certainly not going to put a huge dent in their cash coffers," Michael Souers, a retail analyst with Standard & Poor's, told the E-Commerce Times Frida...

The era of the virtual bank appears to have taken a major step toward reality with the unveiling of Remote Deposit Capture from CheckFree The Atlanta-based company's new technology could ultimately mean consumers can avoid a trip to the bank to deposit checks by simply making such transactions online....

Not quite five months after its US$350 million acquisition by Yahoo, open source e-mail operator Zimbra Tuesday unveiled its Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) 5.0 software This next-generation product has features for reading mail and creating documents offline from a Web browser....

The research arm of Microsoft already had an international reach; now, the company is tapping into the scientific prestige of the U.S. East Coast The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant will open its first research lab in the region -- in Cambridge, Mass. -- in July....

As Yahoo continues to overhaul the focus of its music business, the company will migrate its online music subscription customers in the coming months to Rhapsody America Yahoo will shut down its Music Unlimited service and divert subscribers to Rhapsody, a digital music venture of MTV Networks and RealNetworks....

Aided by a more stabilized sales showing for its video game category, Sony reported a healthy bounce in profits for the third quarter The Tokyo-based firm's PlayStation business halted a streak of six consecutive money-losing quarters, while its core electronics segment -- which includes liquid-crystal display televisions, cameras and computers -- ...

Microsoft thought five years of oversight was long enough, and states that had fought the software giant over alleged monopolistic practices thought five more years were in order Neither side got what it wanted. Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a federal district judge in Seattle, ruled on Tuesday to extend the U.S. government's oversight of the company to ...

Barely a week after eBay announced a change in leadership, the online auctioneer unveiled a major switch in strategy. The company plans to reduce by half the up-front fees it charges users to list their items on its platform. It will also offer its best seller incentives and raise its minimum selling standards The strategy, unveiled by John Donahoe...