Google and Verizon Wireless have evidently gotten over their 700-MHz spectrum auction-inspired differences. This morning, the two companies announced an agreement to deliver mobile applications and devices.
Looks like the Google Books Settlement won’t be hitting the shelves until later this year–at the earliest. Days after the U.S. Justice Department criticized the deal and the forward-looking business arrangements it seeks to create as cause for “significant legal concern,” Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers requested a delay in a judge’s final “fairness hearing” scheduled for Oct. 7 so that they can amend it.
AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity deal with Apple is set to expire as early as next year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t be renewed–despite complaints about the carrier’s network. That’s the word from iSuppli, which predicts Apple will extend its agreement with AT&T because it has no reason not to.
If Apple hasn’t already signed a deal to bring the iPhone to China, it’s getting damn close. Sources tell Reuters that China Unicom may announce the rumored agreement as soon as tomorrow.
If China Unicom and Apple haven’t already inked a deal to bring the iPhone to China, they’re very close to doing so. This morning, a report in Shanghai Securities News claimed the two companies had reached an agreement that grants China Unicom three years of exclusivity.
There’s no question that AT&T’s iPhone-exclusivity deal has been a strategic coup for the carrier. Since its debut in 2007, the device has drawn millions of new customers to the company and done much to revitalize its brand. But the carrier’s deal with Apple won’t last forever, and as soon as it expires, the telecommunications giant will face slowing growth and worse, defections.
EMC has long claimed that its bid for Data Domain is clearly superior to NetApp’s, and today NetApp finally agreed. After market close Wednesday afternoon, NetApp said it has terminated its merger agreement with Data Domain, giving the data storage technology vendor leave to accept EMC’s unsolicited takeover bid–at $33.50 a share cash, an 11 percent premium over its own.
NetApp has cleared all necessary U.S. regulatory hurdles to proceed with its acquisition of Data Domain, though it seems unlikely that the company will prevail now that rival EMC has trumped its bid for the storage vendor.
What part of “No” does EMC not understand? On Monday the company once again said its bid for data storage equipment maker Data Domain is “superior” to a competing offer from NetApp. This, despite the fact that Data Domain earlier in the day issued a statement recommending that shareholders reject EMC’s $30-a-share cash bid.
The long-standing legal dispute between Toys R Us and Amazon has been resolved in the toy retailer’s favor, but at a much discounted price. In a regulatory filing submitted to the SEC Friday, Amazon said it has agreed to pay Toys R Us $51 million to settle claims that it violated a former exclusivity agreement with the company.
Google’s gone and run afoul of the Department of Justice again. Its interest piqued by the growing outcry over the company’s proposed book-search settlement with authors and publishers, the agency has opened an inquiry.
A song purchased from iTunes or Amazon is no different from one bought from a brick-and-mortar retail outlet, despite the vast differences in the economies of distribution between the two. That, in a nutshell, was the jury verdict handed down in a case brought by rapper Eminem’s former production company, FBT Productions, against Universal Music Group.
IBM’s legal efforts to enforce a noncompete agreement that would have prevented 26-year company veteran Mark Papermaster from jumping ship for a high-profile job at Apple appear to have failed. In a terse statement issued this morning, Apple said Papermaster will join the company as SVP of Devices Hardware Engineering on April 24.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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