VentureBeat

Roundup: DOJ approves Oracle-Sun deal, Gamestop falls short, Twitter’s charming memory loss

Here’s the latest action:

The Department of Justice cleared Oracle’s purchase of Sun — Larry Ellison’s $7.4 billion acquisition of the Valley’s rockstar server maker and owner of the rights to Java software, is a transaction on the scale of Yahoo’s ad sales deal with Microsoft. European antitrust regulators are still evaluating whether or not to launch an investigation. The Wall Street Journal reports that an issue about the way Sun licenses rights to Java had… Continue Reading

Roundup: Twitter’s inventor readies next big thing, Verizon supports texting bans, and more

Here’s the latest action:

Twitter co-founder to launch iphone payment service — The project, code-named Squirrel, will allow your iPhone to take credit card payments (though it won’t be the first service to do this), TechCrunch’s MG Siegler reports.

Verizon will support bans on text messaging while driving — One such law recently took effect in California.

European Commission fine against Intel expected Wednesday — IDG calls the case, which has been under investigation since 2000, “one of the most significant… Continue Reading

Roundup: Aggregated links to newspaper web sites, and more

Here’s the latest action:

As an online publication largely comprised of former newspaper journalists — It’s pretty obvious what we here at VentureBeat think about newspaper leaders demanding payment anytime anyone aggregates any of their content. But we’ll stay mum, at this point, out of respect for all the great journalists who work at newspapers.  Instead, here’s what Gabe Rivera, creator of news aggregator Techmeme, tells CNET:

“It’s illuminating to observe that both The Wall Street Journal… Continue Reading

Roundup: Obama’s environmental policy, Sun’s big loss, and more

Here’s the latest (mostly depressing) action:

President Obama reverses Bush policy on environment — Obama endorsed California’s strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and vowed that the federal government will follow suit. Auto manufacturers’ responses were “similar in their ambiguity and political correctness,” according to The New York Times.

Sun posts a $209M loss — At fault are falling demands for servers and storage, as well as a big restructuring charge.

AdMob offering Android-specific ads — The move mirrors AdMob’s similar… Continue Reading

Sun Microsystems begins laying off 6,000 today [confirmed]

Updated with this response from the company:

On November 14, 2008, Sun announced a series of changes designed to align its cost model with the global economy and accelerate the introduction of compelling open source innovations. As part of that effort Sun announced a global workforce reduction of approximately 5,000 to 6,000 employees, representing approximately 15% to 18% of the Company’s global workforce. Sun can confirm that today layoff notifications were given to approximately 1,300 employees as… Continue Reading

The Down Jones: Dow crashes below 10,000 — Nasdaq doing even worse

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has not closed below 10,000 since 2004. Today it might. Well below. As of a little past 9 AM PST, the Dow is down just over 470 points to 9,854.59. The market is seeing a continuation of the bloodbath it saw last week when the Dow fell nearly 1,000 points.

The Nasdaq is once again doing even worse percentage-wise. It’s down well over 100 points today, off over five and a… Continue Reading

So much for that tech stock rebound: Apple, Yahoo, Google killed again

The stock market took a plunge again today. While it wasn’t quite as bad as Monday’s free-fall, the Dow fell 348.22 points (3.22 percent), the Nasdaq fell 92.68 points (4.48 percent) and the S&P 500 fell 46.78 points (4.03 percent). Not good.

Some of the major tech stocks, which took massive hits on Monday, only to partially recover on Tuesday, fell one again. Two in particular, Apple and Yahoo hit new lows today, while Google didn’t… Continue Reading

Roundup: Broadcom backdating, games at work, and more

Former Broadcom executive Henry Samueli to plead guilty in backdating case — The Broadcom flameout saga continues, with former chief technology officer Samueli admitting that he previously lied to SEC investigators about whether or not he had illegally back-dated stock options.  Among Broadcom’s two founding Henrys, Samueli was the good cop. That’s why it was surprising that Samueli pleaded guilty to avoid jail time. But the other Henry, former CEO Henry Nicholas, is up for a… Continue Reading

Roundup: Sprint to announce a big wireless partnership, Sun previews JavaFX and more

Here’s the latest action:

Sprint and Clearwire to join forces for WiMax venture – The telecom companies, along with Comcast, Time Warner, Google and Intel, are about to announce a $3.2 billion investment in a new wireless Internet company using WiMax technology, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal reports that the new company, which will also be called Clearwire, is valued at more than $12 billion. It will launch two years ahead of competing… Continue Reading

Sun adds support for Amazon Web services, targets start-ups

Sun is aiming squarely at the start-up market, making several database and server related moves it hopes will lock start-ups into its services early on.

First, Sun is offering support to companies that integrate Sun’s open source database product, MySQL with the popular Amazon web services hosting, called Elastic Compute Cloud (or EC2). That’s big news for developers. They’ve wanted to use the popular MySQL for their database and EC2, but the mix has been dangerous.

That’s… Continue Reading

Roundup: Search-within-search causes angst, secretive Modu raises $100M, Sun tries optical photonics & more

Here’s the latest action:

Google’s search-within-search bugs some publishers — Apparently some folks such as the Washington Post aren’t looking too kindly on a feature Google added earlier this month, which lets people search within publications like the Post directly from Google. The feature lets you search for a publication on Google, for instance the Post or other sites like Wikipedia, The New York Times, and Wal-Mart, and then gives you a secondary search bar to search… Continue Reading

Sun continues open source rampage, buys PC virtualization company Innotek

Sun Microsystems has acquired Innotek, a Stuttgart, Germany provider of open source desktop virtualization software called VirtualBox, for an undisclosed amount.

VirtualBox is part of a hot group of companies allowing for much more efficient use of computers within large companies. VirtualBox enables desktop or laptop PCs running pretty much any operating system — Windows, Linux, Mac or Solaris — to run multiple, different operating systems side-by-side, switching between them with just a click of the… Continue Reading

Azul’s boat rocks, but raises $40M to take on Sun

Azul Systems, a hard-charging Silicon Valley company that wants to knock Sun off its perch by providing a more efficient server processor to run popular Java applications, has raised $40 million in financing.

This company rivals football player Terrell Owens in generating controversy, though. It got sued by Sun last year (see coverage; scroll down) for not properly licensing some technology, after already tense relations caused by Azul’s hiring of about a dozen former Sun employees…. Continue Reading