Kenneth Corbin

Everyone agreed that the U.S. patent system needs to be updated. And if it hadn’t been for one sticking point, that update might have come this year. Now that high-level talks in the Senate Judiciary Committee have broken down, the opportunity for the patent system’s first major overhaul in 50 years may have been lost […]

WASHINGTON — In the great Internet privacy wars, where so much of the debate takes place through prepared statements, official filings and carefully scripted comments, it’s a rare moment when concerned parties from each side of the aisle sit down to engage in a public discussion. At a National Press Club gathering here, representatives from […]

We all love lists, right? They’re a quick read. Nice and digestible. Quick flashpoints that make for marvelous conversation fodder, if not much else. So here’s this from over the transom, courtesy of BusinessWeek. For the last four years, the publication has offered a listing of the world’s most innovative companies. Returning to the apex […]

Online auction powerhouse eBay today showed impressive first-quarter results, evidently proving successful in shrugging off a series of changes that some industry watchers had feared would cut into the company’s growth. eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) posted first quarter revenue of $2.19 billion, a 24 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. The quarter’s take […]

NEW YORK — It’s become a familiar story: New media trumps old; print gives way to the Web, while flat-footed publishers are left scratching their heads as their more nimble competitors take to the Web with grace and ease. Or so the narrative often seems to go — but what’s true for radio and newspapers […]

AOL continues making moves to strengthen its online ad business, today snapping up Sphere, a contextual content-matching and syndication company. The deal furthers efforts at the Internet giant to transition into a fully ad-driven, online content heavyweight. Acquiring Sphere gives it control of the three-year-old firm’s contextual search technology and monetization platform, which AOL spokespeople […]

AOL today announced that it has expanded its deal with Verizon to manage the telecom provider’s online inventory and its wireless subsidiary’s mobile inventory through the Platform A advertising division. The deal builds on the existing partnership Verizon (NYSE: VZ) had with Third Screen Media, a mobile ad-placement company which AOL acquired last May. Under […]

Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) announced today that it will offer its suite of customer relationship management (CRM) applications to businesses through the Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Apps cloud-hosting platform. The partnership, which builds on an existing alliance between Google and the software-as-a-service (SaaS) leader, signifies an accelerated campaign to upend Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) old-line Office productivity suite […]

As the period for submitting comments to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on behavioral targeting of online ads expires today, numerous groups weigh in from both sides of the contentious debate over data collection and consumer privacy. At issue is the set of self-regulatory principles the FTC issued on Dec. 20, the same day it […]

With the passage of the hotly debated state budget last night, New York legislators approved a bill that will require many online retailers to begin collecting sales taxes on purchases shipped to the state, even if they have no operations or employees working there. New York Governor David Paterson is widely expected to sign the […]

A new report from research firm In-Stat predicts that online music sales will account for 40 percent of all music sold by 2012. For perspective, digital music was 6 percent of the world wide market in 2006, and just 10 percent in last year. So per In-Stat’s estimate, the proportional market will increase 30 percentage […]

For more than two months, Yahoo’s official line about Microsoft’s unsolicited bid is that it is exploring “strategic alternatives.” The pundits (and some shareholders) would argue that no viable alternative exists to the offer from Microsoft. But today, Yahoo made a move. The Web pioneer announced that it was conducting a trial of Google’s AdSense […]