Articles by Keith Regan

The success of Microsoft's decision to embrace the software-as-online-service approach, hailed by many as a landmark shift, may hinge on the software company's ability to make the platform work for advertising as well as for distributing software Analysts say the move to offer online versions of its software may well merge soon with Microsoft's dev...

Continuing its settlement spree, Microsoft put to rest another anti-trust lawsuit by striking a US$30 million deal with in South Korean Web portal owner Daum Communications The portal and ISP had filed a complaint in 2001 with South Korea's Fair Trade Commission alleging that Microsoft had violated fair trade rules by tying its Microsoft messenger ...

Yahoo said it will pass on a chance to make a formal bid to acquire part of all of America Online from Time Warner, leaving Microsoft and Google as the main remaining suitors for what has become a hotly sought-after piece of Internet real estate Yahoo said it never made a specific offer, but did discuss the potential parameters of a deal with Time ...

In a boost for its efforts to have a hand in the online video revolution, Microsoft announced that its MSN portal would partner with The Associated Press (AP) to develop an advertising-supported online video news network The AP Online Video Network will be used to provide members who receive news updates from the wire service with direct news video...

A new report says losses tied to fraudulent e-commerce activity will reach US$2.8 billion this year as professional scammers target fast-growing e-tail sites that are too large to manually verify each purchase but haven't yet implemented sophisticated anti-fraud measures CyberSource, which offers payment solutions and fraud detection solutions, sai...

Hoping to convince more enterprises to ditch existing search tools for its offerings, Google is giving away its Google Mini search appliance to companies willing to make the switch to its high-end search tools for business Customers who sign up to switch to Google Enterprise will be able to receive free Google Mini, a scaled-down version of the sam...

With preparations for the 2005 holiday season well underway, many analysts are predicting another banner year for e-commerce. Strong growth has become routine for the online sales industry But some 10 years after e-commerce began to get noticed and several holiday seasons after nudging its way into the mainstream, even major e-commerce sites still ...

Grokster, the peer-to-peer network that was heir apparent to the original Napster, has gone the way of its infamous predecessor, agreeing to shut down the distribution of its software and pay US$50 million to settle copyright infringement claims brought by record and movie studios The surprising development is another victory for the entertainment ...

Two television networks have struck a deal with a cable provider to offer on-demand downloads of some of their most popular shows, providing perhaps the clearest glimpse yet of the choices consumers will soon have as cable and the Internet converge In separate announcements, NBC and CBS each said they would begin offering content for download, CBS ...

Making big moves to extend the portal wars to the wireless Web, Yahoo and Google are launching major pushes to have their extensive menu of Web services available on users' mobile phones The Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo is poised to announce a partnership with SBC Communications in which the two companies will co-market a Yahoo-branded c...

Further blurring the increasingly hard-to-find line between television and the Web, Yahoo and digital video recorder (DVR) maker TiVo said they would team up to offer TiVo's online scheduling features on Yahoo TV The hookup will enable users of Yahoo TV to use TiVo's scheduling technology to set their DVRs to record a show, using any Web connection...

EBay founder Pierre Omidyar became the latest Internet billionaire to make a major philanthropic push, donating US$100 million to Tufts University with the stipulation that it be used for so-called microfinancing Omidyar and his wife, Pam, are hoping the donation -- the largest in the history of the university, which is located outside of Boston --...

Signaling its intention to be a major player in the online music segment, America Online has purchased MusicNow, a digital music site that specializes in subscription packages AOL said it reached the deal to buy the firm from electronics retailer Circuit City in late September and closed the purchase this week. Specific financial terms were not dis...

For the second time in four months, Microsoft said it would buy a privately held firm developing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies, this time with an eye toward adding more communications tools to its Office productivity suite Microsoft said it would pay an undisclosed sum to acquire Zurich, Switzerland-based media-streams.com, a sof...

Lawmakers are moving forward with a bill that would offer providers of fast-growing Internet calling services the same access to E-911 service that traditional phone companies have and give them more time to put the emergency service in place The legislation, which was approved by the Senate Commerce Committee and is widely expected to pass the ful...

Lawmakers have revived legislation that could provide a huge boost to efforts by music and movie studios to curb online piracy by letting federal agencies write rules that outlaw tactics used to copy programs when they are broadcast Two bills on Capitol Hill dealing with so-called broadcast flags are now being circulated for comment. The legislatio...

IBM and Sun Microsystems are apparently banding together to spur adoption of the OpenDocument platform, a standard that is seen by many as one of the true threats to Microsoft's dominance of the office productivity and document management niche Executives from each of the technology companies have signed an open letter inviting technical executives...

In what is widely expected to be the start of a trend, NBC said it will become the first national network to put the entire broadcast of its evening news onto the Web just hours after it originally airs MSNBC.com will start hosting downloads of NBC Nightly News on Nov. 7. The downloads will be free and include the entire newscast, making NBC the fi...

Hoping to appeal to smaller businesses and fend off competition from open-source rivals, Oracle plans to release a free version of its database software The company has not made it official yet, but the expectation is that by week's end, Oracle will announce that Oracle 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE) will be available for free download be...

Continuing efforts to push its search tools deeper into the business environment, Google said it had struck a deal with IBM to have its enterprise-grade desktop search function integrated into Big Blue tools that search networks Under the deal, terms of which were not disclosed, customers using IBM WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind will be ...