On the heels of its deal to incorporate Twitter data into its search results, Google on Monday announced an experimental Labs feature that searches the social Web. Called Google Social Search, the service is intended to make search results more relevant by enhancing them with personalized social data.
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Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp racked up its second profitable quarter in a row Tuesday despite a decline in advertising. The company–which runs Ask.com and the Citysearch online city guide, among other things–posted earnings of $21.3 million, or 16 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $15.2 million, or 11 cents a share.
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So much for Xbox 360’s game console exclusivity on Netflix streaming. This morning, the DVD-by-mail pioneer said that beginning sometime next month, owners of Sony’s PlayStation 3 game consoles will be able to stream movies and TV shows from Netflix.
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Microsoft’s first brick-and-mortar retail store isn’t scheduled to open for another few hours, but the software giant is already selling PC hardware and third-party software titles–on the Web. This morning it unveiled an expanded online store that will better reflect its new real-world counterpart.
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Though eBay reported a 29 percent drop in profit for its third quarter Wednesday, the company did deliver revenue that was reasonably higher than Wall Street’s expectations. Not that it mattered much. Investors took eBay out to the woodshed anyway, beating its shares down seven percent in after-hours trading.
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If the teen demographic is a critical indicator of a company’s long-term growth prospects in the consumer electronics and online music markets, Apple has nothing to worry about. Because according to the results of Piper Jaffray’s 18th biannual Teen Survey, Apple devices continue to do well with American teenagers.
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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.
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As launch dates go, the timing could not be better. Less than a week after Google’s Gmail suffered its fourth service disruption this year, IBM announced a competing Web mail service intended to undercut it. Called LotusLive iNotes, it’s an email, calendaring, and contact management system aimed squarely at the enterprise space Google has been so diligently courting.
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Well this certainly doesn’t bode well for O2: The U.K. wireless carrier, which has reportedly been selling about 2,200 iPhones a day since it secured exclusive distribution rights to the device in 2007, has run out of the 3GS model. Extremely high levels of demand have emptied not just the company’s physical retail outlets, but its online store as well.
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Get ready for metered broadband. Speaking at the FTTH Conference and Expo in Houston Tuesday, Verizon Communications CTO Richard Lynch said the broadband industry is headed toward a pricing paradigm shift that will see it embrace the usage-based pricing common to the wireless broadband industry.
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That was fast. Just hours after Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, unveiled his open Internet proposal, a number of Republican senators stepped forward to oppose it. Arguing that Net Neutrality will “impede investment and innovation of new technologies,” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R., Texas), proposed an amendment to an Interior Department appropriations bill that would bar the FCC from using federal funds to implement the proposal.
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The TechCrunch 50 hasn’t even begun yet and already it’s making news. Online personal finance site Mint, which took top prize at the event in 2007, has evidently been acquired by Intuit. Price: A reported $170 million.
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