TechJunction

In an unexpected move, AOL has acquired social-networking site Bebo. The price tag: $850 million in cash.
Rumors had floated over the past few months that Bebo, which has over 40 million members, was up for sale. Reports suggested a $1 billion price tag, but there were few hints as to potential buyers. Though Bebo had [...]

Microsoft says merging with Yahoo will allow it to offer a competitive alternative to Google in the market for online services.
Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo for around $44.6 billion in cash and shares, to better compete with Google in the market for online services.
CEO Steve Ballmer made the offer in a letter to [...]

A look into the crystal ball for 2008 shows green IT, an extension for Windows XP, greater Linux adoption, and more open mobile networks, among other visions.
The predictable flood of 2008 IT prognostications has rolled in over [...]

Skype is planning to launch its own mobile handset this month, following in the footsteps of Apple, and the all but confirmed mobile phone from Google.According to BusinessWeek, Skype will offer the handset in conjunction with 3 Mobile in “late October” in Britain, Italy, Hong Kong, and Australia, with the 5 remaining 3 Mobile territories [...]

WIKIPEDIA‘S entry on Albert Einstein looks good. Covering each phase of the physicist’s life, from childhood to death, it tells readers about his politics, religion and science. Honours named after him and books and plays about his life are listed. But there is one snag: there is no way to tell whether the information is [...]

A new report shows Baidu.com increased its share of the search market in China’s top cities, while rival Google lost ground despite continued heavy investments in its Chinese operations.

Baidu has a 69.5 percent share of the search market in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, up 7.6 percentage points since last [...]

Consumers are less satisfied than with both Apple and Google than they were 12 months ago but Yahoo is being viewed in a more positive light according to a new survey in the US.
According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), released by the University of Michigan’s National Quality Research Center yesterday, Apple’s phenomenal success [...]

Clipmarks, one of the many startups that helps users collect and organize information from around the web, is being bought by Forbes Magazine, an inside source tells us.
The New York-based startup lets you select text, photos or videos on web pages, then use Clipmark’s bookmarking feature to save the URL and your selected information to [...]

Google has agreed to buy DoubleClick for US$3.1 billion in cash (nearly double the size of their YouTube Acquisition which was in stock), an acquisition that strengthens Google’s status as an online advertising powerhouse.

Two of the most popular domain suffixes are about to increase its fees charged for registering these domains; “.com” and “.net”.
The annual levy for “.com” will increase 7% to $6.42, and the “.net” fee will go up 10% to $3.85. The per-name fees are what VeriSign collects from companies that sell domain names on its [...]