Business Tech

American Airlines sues Yahoo over trademarked search ads

American Airlines has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Yahoo claiming it is diverting business to the airline's competitors by allowing them to purchase ads that appear next to American Airlines-related search results.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Forth Worth, Texas, late last week, is similar to one that American Airlines filed against Google last year and then settled earlier this year.

The airline contends that allowing other companies to purchase ads that are displayed when someone searches on an American Airlines-trademarked term confuses the public and directs potential American Airlines customers to other companies.

Yahoo spokeswoman … Read more

Sun shares plummet; broader markets falter

Sun Microsystems shares plunged a whopping 17.5 percent on Tuesday, after the company warned that its first-quarter results would fall short of expectations.

Sun closed at $4.77 a share, down $1.01, marking the third time this month that its shares have ended the trading session below $5 a share.

But Sun wasn't the only tech stock bleeding red, as evidenced by the declines in the broader markets.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9,033.66, down 231.77 points, or 2.5 percent. And the tech-heavy Nasdaq ended the day at 1,696.68, … Read more

VMware profits up 28 percent on strong services business

Virtualization company VMware reported a 32 percent increase in revenue for the third quarter and 28 percent in profit on strong sales of services on Tuesday. The news pushed the company's stock price up 23 percent in after-hours trade.

Meanwhile, VMware said it was maintaining its revenue guidance for annual growth of 42 percent to 45 percent , but cautioned that 2008 revenue would likely be at the lower end of the guidance range.

VMware posted third-quarter revenue of $472 million, up from $357.8 million a year ago. Net income rose to $83 million, or 21 cents a share, … Read more

Oracle ordered to name settlement price in SAP lawsuit

A federal court judge ordered Oracle to name its settlement price in its ongoing litigation against archrival SAP over the handling of proprietary maintenance and support information for former Oracle customers who had switched over to a subsidiary of SAP.

Judge Joseph Spero on Monday ordered Oracle to give a specific dollar amount by February 13 to settle the lawsuit it filed in March 2007. Oracle previously indicated in its lawsuit that its damages were in excess of $1 billion.

SAP has until February 18 to issue a counterproposal. A settlement conference is scheduled for February 23.

The judge's … Read more

Google's open-source Android now actually open

Less than a year after announcing Android, the open-source phone operating system intended to jump-start the mobile Internet, Google began sharing the project's underlying source code.

The Android Open Source Project site includes a project list, a feature description, guides to the roles people can have in the project and how to contribute, and of course the Android source code itself.

Google has one team of programmers building the software and another professional services group to help support phone makers building Android phones. Now, though, as T-Mobile's G1 arrives on the market, Google hopes to multiply that by … Read more

Tech may not shed so many jobs this time

With Wall Street teetering and venture capital investment in high tech at its lowest point in more than a decade, few in the technology industry doubt there are scary days ahead.

The bad news is starting to pile up: eBay recently decided to lay off 1,000 workers, a long list of smaller Internet outfits have begun cutting jobs, and most industry watchers expect Yahoo to announce another round of layoffs when it discusses third-quarter earnings after the close of trading Tuesday.

Now here's the good news: whatever job cuts occur in the technology sector in the coming months, … Read more

SanDisk posts loss, hints at more restructuring

SanDisk said it is still "open" to a Samsung buyout offer and hinted at more restructuring to come, as the largest supplier of retail flash memory cards reported a third-quarter 2008 net loss of $155 million on Monday.

The loss was significantly worse than the net income of $85 million reported in the third quarter of 2007. SanDisk and other flash memory chip suppliers have been hit by a steep price decline in flash.

Operating loss, on a GAAP basis, was $250 million, compared to GAAP operating income of $109 million, in the third quarter of 2007.

The … Read more

Symantec's work behind the cloud-based services curtain

Back in the late 1970s, communications provider MCI was on the verge of bankruptcy when suddenly it received a visit from Lady Luck. First, MCI won the right to provide long-distance services in opposition to AT&T and the Federal Communications Commission. In March 1980, MCI then became the first company to compete with AT&T in the residential long-distance market. By 1981, MCI had pulled a complete turnaround. Rather than teetering on the financial precipice, MCI sales approach $1 billion.

The MCI story has many components, but the company's early success went beyond litigation, legislation, and … Read more

Can gadget bargains be had before the holidays?

When Leslie Martinez walked into a Los Angeles-area Best Buy two weeks ago looking only for a 40-inch Sony Bravia LCD TV, she walked out with a heavily discounted Blu-ray Disc player, some Blu-ray movies, and half-priced HDTV accessories.

After seeing the TV she wanted at Costco, she turned to Best Buy to see if they could match the price. In the end, after a bit of negotiating with a salesman, the electronics retailer did much more than that.

"He made it almost impossible to walk away," Martinez said.

Retailers have offered bundled Blu-ray players with TVs before, … Read more