The econalypse may be winding toward its end, but for Apple it evidently never even started. Shares in the company spiked more than $12, or more than six percent, to $202 in early trading Tuesday as investors celebrated another of the company’s great quarters.
Looks like AMD has benefited from the same favorable PC updraft that’s lifting Intel. On Thursday, the chip maker reported a narrower third-quarter loss than expected, thanks to “strong demand” for its microprocessors and graphics chips.
The broader advertising recovery may take time, but search advertising is clearly beating a hasty path back toward normalcy. Or it is in Google’s case anyway. Reporting third-quarter results after market close Thursday, the search giant posted revenue of $5.94 billion, an increase of seven percent compared to the third quarter of 2008.
Google isn’t scheduled to report third-quarter results until Thursday, but already shares in the company are trading higher in anticipation of solid results. At $524.24, they’re up 1.55 percent–nearly $8, and not without good reason.
It has been nearly eight years since the U.S. Department of Justice agreed to dissolve its 1956 consent decree with IBM, lifting restrictions that had prevented the company from becoming a monopoly in the market for punch card tabulating machines. But perhaps those restrictions were better left in place. Because on Thursday, the DOJ opened a new investigation into IBM’s business practices, seeking to determine if the company has abused its monopoly position in the mainframe market.
Microsoft’s proposed antitrust concessions, particularly its offer to give European computer users a choice of Web browsers, appear to have gone over well with the European Commission. This morning, the EC announced a market test of the browser ballot feature Microsoft plans to include in Windows 7.
Toshiba has seen the future of television: A 55-inch, liquid-crystal display jacked into a three-terabyte set-top box capable of displaying eight high-definition broadcasts at once. What is this TV among TVs, this holy grail of couch potatoans called? The Cell Regza 55X1. And it costs $11,115.
Google claims that its Book Search settlement will “bring back to life millions of lost books in a way that serves the interest of all.” And if that truly is its goal, the company is going to have to put its own Brobdingnagian self interests second to those of others–if only for a little while. To wit, Google’s announcement Monday of a number of concessions to the European Union, which seems a bit dubious of the whole thing.
So Google has finally copped to developing an operating system–Chrome OS, a software platform “created for people who spend most of their time on the Web, and…designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.” It is an extraordinary market play. And an unsettling one. For it seeks to place Google, which already collects vast amounts of data about our Internet use, at the very center of our information experience. The privacy implications of that are, of course, horrendous.
Now that sales of the Pre in the states have tapered off to a point where supply and demand are roughly in parity, Palm is gearing up to bring the handset to Europe. In a statement issued this morning, the company said Telefónica’s O2 subsidiary will carry the Pre in the U.K., Germany and Ireland, while its Movistar brand will offer it in Spain.
Microsoft’s proposal to remove Internet Explorer from Windows 7 in Europe may put the company in compliance with European law, but it’s not going to lead to better competition in the browser market. That’s the word from Microsoft’s rivals at home and abroad who say the “must-carry” provision the European Commission has been mulling as a solution to the company’s antitrust indiscretions is the only one that will work.
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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