August 19th, 2010
Remember when Microsoft appeared to be on track to dominate our waking hours at work (Windows, Office) and at play (Xbox, Internet Explorer, MSN)? Seems like a quaint memory now — though, in the long-standing tradition of refighting the last war, as recently as December the European competition authority was …
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August 10th, 2010
So it’s official: Verizon and Google have (sort of) agreed on a way to break the deadlock on “net neutrality” – the highly charged question of when (if ever) Internet providers may differentiate the quality of service among users.
For the first time, companies with very different interests have …
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August 3rd, 2010
It’s never been much of a secret that commercial websites collect as much information about visitors as they dare, using it as a marketing tool themselves or selling it to others. But the depth and breadth of the effort, revealed last month by The Wall Street Journal, was …
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July 20th, 2010
If you bought any generation of iPhone in the U.S., a federal judge just decided you can now join a class action challenging the exclusive marketing agreement between Apple and AT&T. It’s just not evident why you would want to. It’s not at all clear you are …
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June 23rd, 2010
Just before the tech bubble crashed in 2000 Microsoft had a market capitalization of $586 billion while one-time rival Apple’s cap languished at $17 billion. Now the two tech icons are running neck and neck — a reversal of fortune the bloggerati are inclined to ascribe to a …
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March 30th, 2010
…the Wall Street Journal op-ed on high-speed Internet service, co-authored by the often-warring CEOs of Google and Verizon. Messrs. Schmidt and Seidenberg laud the FCC’s ambitious broadband plan – in particular, the focus on promoting innovative uses of the net in key areas like health care, the goal …
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March 12th, 2010
As if Google didn’t have enough trouble in Europe, the Federal Trade Commission has opened a second front against the company. The FTC’s concern – that Google’s proposed merger with AdMob would allow it to dominate in mobile phone advertising – has little to …
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February 24th, 2010
It’s no surprise that Google is now under the competition authority’s microscope in Brussels. This, after all, is the company with a 90 percent share of the explosively growing Internet ad market in Europe. Indeed, back home, where it has “only” an 80 percent market share, the Justice …
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February 11th, 2010
Google has once again shaken up an IT market (this time the market for Internet service) with a plan for an experimental superfast fiber-optic network. The very best part of the announcement is the price tag to federal taxpayers: nada. Instead of lobbying Washington for a handout as an …
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January 20th, 2010
Apologies to Tina Turner. But, yes, like the chair of the FCC (see our Jan. 12th post), we believe that discrimination does have a lot to do with the net neutrality debate. That agreement, though, is the beginning of the debate, not the end, because there is hardly a …
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