Kenneth Corbin

The Social Security Administration has agreed to pay more than $500 million in benefits that were withheld from 80,000 people since 2007 due to an errant computer program. The preliminary agreement, approved by U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland, Calif., resolves the class-action suit Martinez v. Astrue. In that suit, the plaintiffs argued […]

Social networking heavyweight Facebook said today that it is acquiring online sharing service FriendFeed for an undisclosed amount. FriendFeed provides denizens of the social Web with a hub to monitor the activities of their pals across an array of participating sites, including Facebook, as well as other popular spots on the Web like Google and […]

eBay and beleaguered automaker General Motors are making good on their plans to trial a novel partnership that will enable car shoppers to peruse GM’s California dealerships through the popular e-commerce hub. Tomorrow, the companies plan to launch a Web site, gm.ebay.com, that will allow visitors to browse, click, haggle over prices and buy cars […]

Microsoft has agreed to sell the digital advertising agency Razorfish to Publicis Groupe, the French firm that ranks as one of the world’s largest ad agency holding companies, for approximately $530 million. Once the deal is closed, the companies said they plan to enter into what they’re calling a strategic alliance agreement that will see […]

This is an odd one. Borrell and Associates, a market research firm based in Williamsburg, Va., that focuses on media and advertising, is forecasting that newspaper revenues from print advertising will not only level off over the next few years, but actually increase. Not all ad revenues (print and Web). Just *print*. “With news stories […]

As revenue shortages continue to weigh on federal and state budgets, officials have been looking for new sources of income at every turn. That pressure has seen renewed calls for legalizing and taxing marijuana, new efforts to clamp down on online sales tax collection and, most recently, a push to reverse the ban on Internet […]

The Federal Communications Commission today held the first in a series of public meetings aiming to guide the agency’s work in developing a plan to deliver high-speed Internet access to all Americans. Throughout August and September, the FCC plans to hold about 20 of these so-called staff workshops to flesh out various aspects of the […]

A group of lawmakers is appealing to the Commerce Department to take action to keep up its close ties with the organization that oversees the system of assigning names on the Internet. Since its inception in 1998, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has operated in partnership with the Commerce Department, but […]

New details emerging from Microsoft and Yahoo’s ten-year search and advertising partnership suggest that Yahoo may be getting a better deal than it initially appeared — potentially upping its take as the agreement progresses. The agreement will also see more than money changing hands. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) also plans to take on 400 employees from […]

Google has offered up $106.5 million in stock to acquire On2 Technologies, a firm specializing in video compression technology, in an effort to boost the quality of its video offerings on the Web. “Today video is an essential part of the web experience, and we believe high-quality video compression technology should be a part of […]

Yahoo has unveiled a suite of new features for its popular social-bookmarking service Delicious, including a tie-in with the white-hot micro-blogging community Twitter to give it a more real-time flavor. For a rapidly growing number of Web users, Twitter has become something akin to the pulse of the Web, where a list of trending topics […]