Some people have been questioning why Google would dump nearly a billion dollars into a three-year search deal with Mozilla and its Firefox browser instead of leaving Mozilla high and dry after their existing agreement expired. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that the new deal is three times higher than the previous one, and is more than Microsoft was willing to pay Mozilla to have Bing featured as the default search. Why give all that money to a competitor? That's the wrong question to ask, according to one of Chrome's developers.
Mozilla on Tuesday announced it had inked a new search agreement with Google (we covered the story 
Seagate on Monday officially closed the deal to acquire the hard disk drive (HDD) business of Samsung for $1.4 billion, a transaction that was first announced in April 2011. Under terms of the agreement, Seagate gains select elements of Samsung's HDD division, including assets, infrastructure, and employees. Among the assets is Samsung's M8 product line of high-capacity, 2.5-inch HDDs.
It’s been a long hard climb up the mountain for AT&T as it sought regulatory approval for its $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile USA. Well, it looks like AT&T will never see that mountaintop. The carrier has announced via press release that it is walking away from the deal in search of greener spectrum pastures. Though, Ma Bell did offer a parting swipe at the regulators that essentially killed the deal.
The company responsible for Farmville, Mafia Wars, and several other popular social games is finding out that nothing's guaranteed in the second coming of the dot-com bubble. Zynga shares began trading today, and at first, it looked as though Zynga would follow in the footsteps of Groupon, LinkedIn, and other social sites that have gone public and exploded on the stock market.
Netflix shareholders haven't been thrilled with Netflix's direction the past few months. After announcing a spin-off of its DVD-by-mail rental business and higher prices for streaming and DVD services combined, subscribers raged until Netflix reversed course on severing its DVD arm, but the company didn't relent on recent price hikes. It's been paying a price in subscriber losses ever since. Enter unhappy investors, though talk of Verizon taking over the streaming service has them smiling once again.
Effects of the hard drive shortage resulting from major flooding in Thailand earlier this year continue to reverberate throughout the technology industry. Even Intel, the world's largest chip maker, isn't immune to to it all, and in fact the Santa Clara outfit warned today that its fourth quarter results are expected to be below the company's previous outlook.
If Hewlett-Packard were a living, breathing entity, it might have a future in politics where it's perfectly acceptable (or least expected) to flip-flop on key issues. You know, things like whether or not to forge ahead with its PC business, the $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm only to later flip webOS to the open source crowd, and the whole TouchPad fiasco. And did we mention HP is once again interested in building webOS tablets?
Dutch GPS device maker TomTom isn't super confident in the future of personal navigation devices (PNDs) and is undergoing a restructuring effort that involves shifting its focus to pre-installed navigation devices in automobiles and fleet management applications. Unfortunately for some of TomTom's employees, the company's efforts also entail a 10 percent workforce reduction.
The sky isn't falling or anything like that, but worldwide semiconductor spending won't be quite as high as previously thought, according to market research firm Gartner. The psychic bean counters at Gartner now believe semiconductor spending in 2012 will reach $309 billion worldwide, a 2.2 percent increase from 2011, but down from Gartner's previous forecast of 4.6 percent growth.
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