2006

Carphone Warehouse Group has agreed to buy Time Warner unit AOL's UK Internet access business for 370 million pounds (US$689 million) in cash, transforming the mobile phone retailer into Britain's third biggest broadband provider, the two companies announced in a joint statement to the London Stock Exchange.

The all-cash transaction will give Carphone Warehouse an extra 1.5 million high-speed Internet access customers to add to an existing base of 625,000, propelling it up to third place in the broadband league table behind BT and NTL.

Google said that another US university will add its books to the Internet search titan's controversial project to make the world's written works available online.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Google announced an agreement lately to expand access to hundreds of thousands of public and historical books and documents from more than 7.2 million holdings at the UW-Madison Libraries and the Wisconsin Historical Society Library to its Google Books Library Project, they said.

Amid reports of a successful nuclear test by the North Korean government, Google lately went ahead with plans to launch a new R&D center on Korean soil.

Internet search giant Google Inc., responded to the revelation of new North Korean nuclear testing with an announcement outlining plans to open a new research and development facility on Korean soil to hire local employees and develop online services and technology for global markets, the commerce ministry and the company said in a statement.

Online media firm reports sales that miss targets and cuts revenue guidance. But stock climbs after CEO discloses vital new technology is now running.
The small business and merchant marketplace is one that Web companies have long seen as a key to long-term growth of the Internet and e-commerce. Despite plunging prices for Web domains and hosting services, millions of small merchants still do not have a Web presence.

Microsoft has altered its plans to keep a lock on the kernel of its upcoming Vista OS amid criticism that the move would prohibit security software vendors from developing compatible third-party products.

Apparently in response to pressure from the European Union, Microsoft has reversed its decision to lock up Vista from third-party security vendor access and now says it will make key components available to software firms such as Symantec and McAfee.

Google Inc. is converting its renowned headquarters to run partly on solar power, hoping to set an example for corporate America.
Google is planning to deploy a solar electricity system that will have a capacity of 1.6 megawatts at its famed million square foot headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. It will be the largest such installation on a corporate campus in the United States and one of the largest in the world, the company said.

Anti-piracy tech shuts people out of their PCs if the OS is not activated soon after installation.
Microsoft of late said that it will build anti-piracy features into its upcoming Windows Vista operating system and Windows Longhorn server software.

As a firm believer in the axiom that knowledge is power, Google is pushing the ability to process information just as it puts more facts and figures at the fingertips of Internet users.
Internet search titan Google announced that it would launch "The Literacy Project" at the world's largest book fair taking place in Germany this month.

Search giant lets users show Gadgets on their websites
In the latest step in its continuing effort to focus the Web services model around its own servers, Google Inc. has expanded its Gadgets program making it easier for Web Developer to add hundreds of miniature programs to independent Web sites, in a move that brings handy features to users instead of making users rely on Google.com.

Search giant Google is re-launching its online spreadsheet and word processor software, in another challenge to archrival Microsoft.
Say good-bye to the Writely brand. Google plans to integrate the two into a single application suite. The newly wedded software will go by the name Google Docs & Spreadsheets, an online productivity suite "that makes it easier for people to create, manage, and share documents and spreadsheets online."