Corporate and legal

A freeway overpass connecting two parts of Microsoft's Redmond headquarters has become a well-traveled road for critics of how the federal government is spending its stimulus dollars.

The "Microsoft Bridge," as it has been dubbed, is slated to receive $11 million in stimulus dollars--money that critics say is a waste, but local and state officials have praised as a prudent use of transportation dollars.

The overpass indeed connects two parts of Microsoft's campus. But as proponents point out, it also connects two parts of Redmond's business community with each other and with the local … Read more

File swappers in Sweden, land of the world's largest bittorrent sharing site, The Pirate Bay, are facing a tougher future.

The so-called IPRED law, scheduled to go into effect Wednesday, will in some instances require Internet service providers to reveal subscribers' Internet Protocol addresses to copyright holders--including the film, music, and game industries--that charge users with illegal file sharing.

The Swedish law stipulates that property rights holders can take their grievances to a court, which will examine the evidence, including the extent of the file sharing, and decide whether the IP address will be released. The copyright holder then … Read more

We've barely unpacked our bags from GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, and we're on the road again to Las Vegas for CTIA Wireless, the U.S. trade show and conference held every spring where the biggest and most influential players in the U.S. mobile market gather.

While there will be some cell phones announced at this year's show, most of the excitement will center on software applications and the virtual storefronts that are popping up to distribute these new applications. Since the success of Apple's App Store, which provides easy access to third-party applications for iPhones, other companies have jumped on the bandwagon announcing their own application stores.

Everyone from Google to Microsoft to Nokia to Research In Motion has announced plans for a new application store. And at this year's CTIA, some of these new app stores will come to life. RIM is expected to announce that its BlackBerry AppWorld is open for business, and Microsoft will start showing off its Marketplace for the first time.

But application markets aren't the only thing that will be talked about. Carriers like Verizon and Clearwire will also be touting faster broadband wireless networks that will help make these applications a reality. And of course handset makers will be showing off new products, some of which have already been announced, such as the Palm Pre.

But this year's spring CTIA Wireless show will likely be smaller than in years past. The economic downturn has taken its toll on the mobile market. Even Nokia, the world's largest and strongest maker of cell phones, has slashed expectations for 2009. And the company has already begun laying off employees and closing facilities to cut costs.… Read more

As expected, Google launched Google Ventures on Monday, following other Silicon Valley firms with a division to invest in promising start-ups.

"This is Google's effort to take advantage of our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies," said Google Ventures managing partners Rich Miner and Bill Maris in a blog post announcing the effort. "By borrowing the best practices of top-tier, financially focused venture capital firms and bringing to bear Google's unique technical expertise and brand, we think we can find young companies with truly awesome potential and encourage their development into … Read more

Software services in the U.S. helped temper the overall sequential decline in technology jobs during the fourth quarter, allowing the industry to minimize jobs losses compared to the private sector, according to a TechAmerica report released late Monday.

Tech jobs, overall, dipped 0.6 percent, or by 38,000 positions, sequentially in the fourth quarter, while U.S. private sector jobs declined 1.3 percent during the same period, according to TechAmerica, a technology advocacy trade group.

"The tech sector weathered the storm longer and stronger than other parts of the economy," Phil Bond, TechAmerica president, said … Read more

Updated at 10:35 p.m. PDT with confirmation from Google.

Google has launched a venture capital arm to invest in a diverse array of industries, including the consumer Internet, software, clean tech, and health care.

The fund, which was announced late Monday in a company blog, will be headed by William Maris, an investor and entrepreneur who was hired by Google last year to help set up the venture, and Rich Miner, former manager of Google's mobile platforms group.

Google Ventures, as the fund is called, is expected to receive a $100 million investment from Google in the … Read more

So should News Corp. buy Twitter? That's what Vanity Fair columnist and pundit Michael Wolff speculated this week in an article on Newser.com, the aggregation site he founded.

"There may not be anything less than Twitter that can distract Wall Street from News Corp.'s stubborn and, at this point, unnatural newspaper fetish," Wolff wrote, "and, as well, convince it, for one last hurrah, that (CEO Rupert Murdoch) isn't...well, gone."

The catalyst for Wolff's recommendation was the recent hire of former AOL chief Jon Miller as head of News Corp.'s … Read more

Microsoft has hired Dayne Sampson, a Yahoo vice president of operations since 2006, the software giant said Monday.

"We're very excited to have Dayne Sampson join the team, reporting to Debra Chrapaty, corporate vice president of Global Foundation Services (GFS). Operations and foundation services are key to delivering the Microsoft software plus services vision, and Dayne's extensive operations and industry experience will be a strong asset for GFS and the company," the company said in a statement.

GFS, which runs Microsoft's data centers, is an important part of Microsoft's effort to expand from software … Read more

Sun Microsystems shares fell as low as about 13 percent Monday afternoon, steeper than the declines experienced by the broader markets. Investors, who are awaiting word on whether speculation of an IBM merger will become a reality, apparently were spooked, sending shares as low as $6.82 a share in afternoon trading.

Shares of Sun lost 59 cents to close at $7.24, down about 7.5 percent, Monday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, meanwhile, fell as low as about 4 percent to 7,437.59 during intra-day trading and the Nasdaq dipped about 4 percent to 1,484.98. … Read more