InternetNews Staff

European Union antitrust regulators launched an in-depth probe on Thursday into Oracle’s $7 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems on concerns the deal could dent competition in the database market. “The (European) Commission has an obligation to ensure that customers would not face reduced choice or higher prices as a result of this takeover,” Competition Commissioner […]

Who says you can’t buy friends? An Australian online marketing company is selling friends and fans to Facebook members after offering a similar service to Twitter users. Advertising, marketing and promoting company uSocial said it was targeting social networking sites because of their huge advertising potential. “Facebook is an extremely effective marketing tool,” Leon Hill, […]

Online video site YouTube is in talks with several major movie studios about renting movies to users by streaming the movies over the Internet according to a person familiar with the talks on Wednesday. It would mark the first time the world’s most popular video site would charge its users to watch videos. YouTube, which […]

Google’s plan to digitize millions of books would violate German copyright law and the country’s privacy protections for Internet users, the German government said in a U.S. court filing. Germany opposes a proposed settlement — which Google reached with the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers, among others, in October 2008 — because Google […]

Vevo, an online music video start-up backed by two major music labels and supported by YouTube’s technology platform, is in talks with CBS and NBC to license and develop shows for the Web, according to two people familiar with the talks. The Web site Vevo is the music industry’s answer to Hulu, the popular U.S.-based […]

NEW YORK — Is it a book? Is it a movie? Is it a Web site? Actually it’s all three. Anthony Zuiker, creator of the “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” U.S. television series, is releasing what he calls a “digi-novel” combining all three media — and giving a jolt to traditional book publishing. Zuiker has created […]

BERLIN — Germany’s chief electoral commissioner told pollsters on Tuesday to be vigilant with their exit poll data on the September 27 federal election after state results were published on Twitter before polls closed on Sunday. Roderich Egeler told a news conference he expected the polling institutes that supply exit poll data to German networks […]

BERLIN — German election officials said on Monday they were investigating whether exit poll data were made public on Twitter before polls closed on Sunday and there might be an appeal against the result if laws had been broken. “We are currently investigating the facts of the case,” said deputy electoral commissioner Uwe Korzen-Krueger in […]

The Obama administration unveiled new rules for searching computers and other electronic devices when people enter the United States, attempting to address concerns about violating privacy and constitutional rights. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security defended such searches as necessary to detect information about potential terrorism plots as well as other crimes […]

Time Warner Cable has signed up at least seven large media companies for a test that will offer television programs on the Internet to paying subscribers, the Wall Street Journal said on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. Networks participating in the trial are expected to include General Electric’s Syfy, Time Warner’s TNT, Cablevision’s […]

Actress Jessica Biel has overtaken Brad Pitt as the most dangerous celebrity to search in cyberspace, according to Internet security company McAfee Inc. For the third consecutive year, McAfee surveyed which A-list celebrity was the riskiest to track on the Internet after Pitt topped the list last year and Paris Hilton came in first in […]

Nokia will try again to tackle Apple’s iPhone in the top-end of the handset market with a bet on Linux software, several industry sources told Reuters. Top handset maker Nokia (NYSE: NOK) will show its first high-end phone running on Maemo, a version of Linux, next week at the annual Nokia World event in Stuttgart, […]