Technology Industry Archive

Watching businesses at times is like sitting through a comedy. You see people doing something so obviously stupid, so clearly set to blow up in their faces, that you want to bury your face and say, “No, stop now!” But they don’t and it does. This seems to have popped up in high tech with a ferocious frequency over the last year or so. In fact, such actions are becoming so...

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EU tells Microsoft to ditch browser — The European Union ruled that Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows violates antitrust rules. [Source: The New York Times] Dell settles with attorneys general — Dell will pay $3.85 million as a settlement with 34 number of states that the company was misleading in some financing and service offers. The company was avoiding...

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The news that Steve Jobs will be taking an unexpected extended medical leave from his position as Apple’s CEO is continuing the speculation of whether he’ll be able to run the company again and what might happen to Apple as a result. The fascination in the technology world is understandable from one view, as Jobs is one of the personal computer’s historic figures and great...

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Century-old Nortel Networks, once a networking behemoth with a whopping market cap of over $300 billion, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Nortel never recovered from dot-com bust. The aftermath included a devastating accounting scandal that resulted in the firing of CEO Frank Dunn and the departure of ten executives and five directors. While the bankruptcy wasn’t entirely...

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Google’s focus on ad revenue has been a potential weak point for the company and it rightly continues trying to diversify its business. The announcement that it will allow “technology solution providers” to resell Google Apps to businesses is just another example. But Google is about to find that working with a reseller channel is far more complicated, painful, and...

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Seagate Technology, the world’s leading disk drive maker, shocked the markets yesterday by announcing the immediate departure of CEO Bill Watkins and president and COO David Wickersham. Chairman and former CEO Stephen Luczo has assumed the president and CEO functions. What made this announcement so unexpected was the significant presence Seagate’s Watkins had at last week’s Consumer...

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Yasni, a big name in people search in such countries as Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, got its start in 2007. When the company saw that roughly 100,000 of its users were from the U.S., it decided to make a push, starting last November, into this country and the U.K. with targeted English-language versions. We chatted with founder and CEO Steffen Rühl back in December, and followed up on...

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Judge tosses Rambus claims against Micron — It’s never a good idea to destroy documents a judge might want. And a federal judge, ruling that Rambus’s destruction of materials related to its patent infringement suit against Micron was “obstructive at best, misleading at worst,” said that former could not enforce its patents against the latter. Rambus stock dropped...

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On December 31, Dell announced that it was reorganizing around major customer segments and that CMO Mark Jarvis and Mike Cannon, president of global operations would be replaced. But don’t feel too badly for them; even in a down economy, they are leaving with some green lining their pockets. According to an 8-K that Dell filed with the SEC today, each has a significant exit package....

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Google is facing some “challenges,” as the corporate set says when wanting to avoid the word “problem.” Only in this case, the real concept may be “quicksand pit.” As the tech industry has seen throughout its history – including the likes of Wang, Netscape, AOL, and Packard Bell — companies can ride high one day and wind up in a ditch the next. And,...

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