Articles by Rob Spiegel

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has apparently opened an inquiry into former HP CEO Mark Hurd's sudden departure from the company last August. The SEC is looking into whether Hurd leaked information about HP's planned US$13.9 billion acquisition of Electronic Data Systems to Jodie Fisher, an HP contract event coordinator, according to media reports...

In the movie "The Social Network," the Zuckerberg character keeps insisting to his marketing director that selling advertising on the site would make Facebook uncool. Six years later, we've grown accustomed to advertising on Facebook. Now, Zuckerberg's team is ready to take the commercialization of Facebook a step further, opening the doors for full e-commerce...

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was spotted in Beijing Monday at the headquarters of Baidu, China's largest search engine. A photo of Zuckerberg heading to lunch with Baidu cofounder and CEO Robin Li spread across the Internet, setting off speculation that Facebook is trying to figure out a way to overcome the Chinese government's blockade of Facebook. China blocks a number of American websites, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube...

Oracle on Wednesday announced two cloud-based office productivity suites for the desktop and mobile devices -- Oracle Cloud Office and Oracle Open Office 3.3. Both products will compete directly with Google Docs and Microsoft Office The products are designed to be enterprise-level suites with applications for word processing, spreadsheets, pr...

The U.S. Commerce Department's proposed federal Internet privacy rules are a giveaway to data collectors, according to some consumer groups. Other critics say they could spell the end of the free Internet The Commerce Department wants to create an online privacy bill of rights and a code of conduct regarding privacy that would be enforceable b...

Twitter has received US$200 million in financing from the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, according to a Wednesday post by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo on the company blog. The funding pegs Twitter's valuation at $3.7 billion. Clearly, the investors believe Twitter will find an effective way to squeeze substantial revenue from its massive user community.

Google has put off making a choice on which city to use as a test for ultra high-speed broadband, according to a Wednesday blog post by Milo Medin, vice president of access services The company had planned to announce the selected city by the end of 2010, but it was not prepared for the level of interest from communities vying to be part of th...

Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old CEO of Facebook, was named Time magazine's Person of the Year on Wednesday. Time argued the importance of Zuckerberg and Facebook saying, "Facebook has merged with the social fabric of American life, and not just American but human life: nearly half of all Americans have a Facebook account, but 70 percent of Facebook users live outside the United States."

The U.S. Army wants to start issuing smartphones as part of each solder's basic equipment, the Army Times reported on Sunday. It plans to begin fielding smartphones, network equipment and applications in February to the first Army brigade under a combat team modernization program. In addition to smartphones, the Army will be testing other electronic devices that may be useful to troops.

Yahoo is planning to cut its workforce by about 650 employees Tuesday, according to numerous press reports, in response to pressure from investors who want the company to inject some life into its lackluster stock performance The Web portal has been struggling in the face of stellar growth by competitors like Google and Facebook. Yahoo's layoff...

Apple, Google and others have entered into a bidding war for the patents held by Nortel Networks, which is liquidating its assets in bankruptcy, Reuters reported Monday. Nortel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2009 but failed to emerge successfully and began selling assets in mid-2009 Nortel holds 4,000 patents grouped int...

A federal judge on Friday dismissed a patent lawsuit Interval Licensing -- Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen's company -- filed last August in Seattle against 11 firms, including Apple and Google. Interval claims the defendants violated four patents owned by Paul Allen's company Interval Research on technologies it developed before it folded in 2000. When the company closed, it transferred the patents to Interval Licensing...

Google's testing program for its open source Chrome operating system is no ordinary beta. The company is inviting applications to be one of the reportedly 60,000 users who will be part of the beta test and receive a Cr-48 netbook loaded with Chrome OS. Google reportedly is signing up beta testers by U.S. ZIP code -- rather than on a first-come-first-served basis -- to get broad input...

In protest over what it sees as excessive control over Java by Oracle, the Apache Software Foundation has resigned from the Java SE/EE Executive Committee on Thursday. Apache has served on the Java Executive Committee for more than 10 years Apache's departure follows the EC's approval of the specifications for Java SE (Standard Edition) 7 and ...

In what looks like a poke in the eye at Microsoft, Google has introduced Google Message Continuity, a service designed to safeguard Exchange messages through Gmail. The Postini-based service targets those who run Microsoft Exchange 2003 or 2007. It is designed to make sure users never lose access to email during an Exchange outage -- whether planned or unplanned...

Dell announced Thursday it has entered into merger talks with Compellent Technologies, offering US$27.50 per share for a total of nearly $900 million. The offer is below Compellent's stock price on Wednesday of $33.65 a share While acquisition bids are typically slightly above stock price, Dell may see Compellent's share price as distorted. Be...

Netflix is spending big time to become the dominant video streaming player in the nascent Web-TV world. On Wednesday, Netflix announced it has reached an agreement with Walt Disney to stream ABC programs through its online service The deal will last one year with an option to extend for an estimated US$150 to $200 million, The Los Angeles Time...

Microsoft announced Wednesday that it will add a "do not track" option to the next version of Internet Explorer 9 when it is released in 2011. The Tracking Protection feature is a privacy tool designed to help keep third-party websites from monitoring users' Web behavior by letting users filter content on a page that may have an impact on privacy ...

What's the difference between a browser and an operating system? Or, can Google take on Microsoft is its sweet spot -- the Windows operating system? Google held a press conference in San Francisco Tuesday announcing Google Chrome OS, an Internet-based operating system that has been launched in beta version on a laptop known simply as "Cr-48." By next summer, both Acer and Samsung will release laptops with Chrome OS and Intel chips...

AT&T ranks as the lowest-scoring cellphone service provider in a new Consumer Reports survey that asked 58,000 customers to rate their carriers. AT&T was the only one to drop significantly in overall satisfaction from a year earlier. Consumer Reports gave a preview of the results in a blog post on Monday -- the full report will appear in the magaz...