Articles by Keith Regan

Private equity firm Carlyle Group reportedly has offered about US$11 billion for UK-based Virgin Media, with a bidding war for the rights to acquire the quirky company possible Carlyle may have bid as much as $30 to $35 per share for the company, according to press reports. Virgin provides cable TV, high speed Internet access as well as both landli...

Google has struck a deal to have international technology supplier Ingram Micro distribute its enterprise search tools. The agreement is the search giant's most aggressive bid yet to foster growth in its relatively fledgling corporate search division Ingram Micro will sell the Google Mini and the Google Search Appliance hardware and software soluti...

Oracle extended a run of strong financial performance with a blockbuster fourth quarter, outpacing estimates for growth and profit as CEO Larry Ellison's strategy of aggressively buying up applications vendors continues to pay off Oracle earned US$1.6 billion in the quarter that ended on May 31, compared to $1.3 billion in the year-ago period. It b...

The diverging fortunes of Nintendo and Sony were underscored Monday when Nintendo's total stock market value eclipsed that of Sony for the first time Nintendo, whose Wii gaming console was the surprise hit of last year's holiday season, moved past Sony to become one of Japan's 10 most valuable companies....

With the dust still settling from the abrupt departure of CEO Terry Semel, Yahoo said Sunday it would revamp its advertising sales unit, merging its search and display operations into a single team The company announced the changes along with news of the departure of its longtime advertising display honcho Wenda Harris Millard, who is leaving the c...

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has denied a request from Qualcomm to put on hold an order barring phones containing chips made by Qualcomm that have been found to infringe on a rival's patents from the U.S. market The decision, handed down on Thursday, likely leaves Qualcomm with few options for delaying the penalty, and the company ...

European Union 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, the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, to broaden its probe into the privacy implications of rapidly evol...

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 sometime this summer and, at least at first, will be...

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, confirmed Thursday that it was in talks with the coun...

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 combined Yahoo-MySpace....

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 US$192 million, or 39 cents per share, 18 percent lower than the $234 million, or 47 cent...

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 that his Hollywood background -- he had been an execut...

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 Online Protection Center....

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 through the mail through its Web-based rental program ...

China has agreed to work more closely with the U.S. to curb the flow of pirated goods, the head of the U.S. customs agency announced Friday The agreement calls for China to more aggressively pursue within its own borders alleged producers of counterfeit goods that are seized by U.S. customs officials. The promise comes amid a fresh round of concern...

Adobe Systems posted record revenue and profits that beat Wall Street forecasts, but the software maker's shares fell Friday on a less-than-stellar outlook The company's revenue reached a record of US$745.6 million for the second quarter, a 17 percent jump over the same period in 2006, when sales were $694.4 million. The figure also outpaced the co...

A UK-based phone maker announced a flat-rate music download service for mobile phones in key European markets Thursday, getting the service -- which works with a host of phones -- into stores two weeks ahead of Apple's hotly anticipated iPhone Omnifone launched MusicStation -- which comes with subscription music access provided by multiple major la...

Auction giant eBay has stopped buyingGoogle AdWords in apparent retaliation for a now-canceled event meant to build support among eBay sellers forGoogle Checkout -- a sign of the increasing tensions between the Internet competitors The spat reportedly began when Google last week announced it would hold an event that coincided with the beginning of ...

Shareholders upset about Yahoo's lagging performance -- compared with Google's market dominance -- forced CEO Terry Semel to defend the company's market strategy, even as he and other company-backed officers were re-elected to the portal's board of directors Yahoo shareholders defeated a proposal to change the way executive pay is determined, but a...

Chipmaker Texas Instruments narrowed its second-quarter fiscal outlook late Monday, reducing the high end of its forecast range on weaker demand for wireless networking gear and calculators sold to the education market Texas Instruments -- a bellwether of sorts because it is the world's largest maker of chips for wireless devices -- said second-qua...