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Amazon last week stunned Wall Street by releasing third-quarter earnings that blazed past consensus estimates on the strength of its growing cloud services business and surprisingly strong response to its efforts to boost membership in its Prime program. Shares were up almost 7 percent to $601.72 in...

The European Union's Court of Justice on Thursday ruled that bitcoin, the virtual payment system that has shown promise and potential as an emerging currency, should be considered exempt from Value Added Tax under existing law. Swedish national David Hedqvist sought a ruling from the Swedish Revenue...

Twitter announced two tools, "Publish" and "Curator," a Collections API, and an ecosystem of partners designed to let publishers organize tweets to better tell a tale. The API creates a single Collection ID that can be used to edit, update and publish a story from any tool in the Twitter ecosystem. ...

YouTube on Wednesday introduced YouTube Red, a $10 a month ad-free channel. Membership extends across devices, and consumers can access the service from other YouTube channels or apps, including YouTube Gaming. Subscribers to YouTube Red will get a twofer -- it automatically provides access to Googl...

U.S. government agencies appear to have gotten the memo: Big data is good for you. Federal agencies' acquisition, storage, processing and management of large chunks of information will drive the government to use big data technologies, according to a survey of federal information technology managers...

Tesla Motors' stock price on Tuesday dropped more than 11 percent following Consumer Reports' withdrawal of its favorable recommendation for the company's Model S sedan. Poor reliability contributed to the decision to withdraw its recommendation, but the magazine noted that 97 percent of Tesla owner...

The healthcare industry has become the favorite playground for many cybercriminals, suggests a report Trustwave released earlier this month. Of the 398 full-time healthcare professionals surveyed, 91 percent of information technology respondents and 77 percent of nontechnical respondents believed cr...

The cybersecurity pact the United States and China agreed to last month hasn't stopped Chinese hackers from continuing their efforts to steal intellectual property from U.S. companies, CrowdStrike said Monday. "Over the last three weeks, CrowdStrike Falcon platform has detected and prevented a numbe...

CEO Tim Cook on Monday revealed that Apple had signed up 6.5 million customers willing to pay for its Apple Music streaming service. Another 8.5 million users currently are giving the service a look-see during a free three-month trial period. Cook unveiled the hard numbers of paid subscribers for th...

An "unhealthy ecosystem" has developed outside of Amazon and it has been harming the company's website, Amazon said in a complaint filed last week in Washington State Superior Court. The suit alleges that 1,114 "John Does" placed fake product reviews on the company's website. The common bond shared ...

The JPEG Committee last week met in Brussels to discuss a proposal to secure privacy information such as metadata for published pictures that includes geographical information enabling identification of people who have given anonymous interviews to journalists, and pictures posted on social media in...

Google won an important legal victory on Friday, when the Second United States Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court's judgment in its years-long battle with the Authors Guild over Google Books. The case "tests the boundaries of fair use," Judge Pierre Leval wrote in the appeals court's ...

It passes through the channels of federal laws, spills across state lines and even bleeds into the protected realm of college sports. The multibillion-dollar industry that is fantasy sports has stood up to legal challenges so far, but the surging sector still battles problems with perception and fac...

Square on Wednesday announced that it had registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission for its long-expected initial public offering. A startup that specializes in electronic payments, Square has been operating in the red. It plans to raise up to $275 million in its IPO, it disclosed. Howe...

It just makes too much sense. Big government can function much better if government agencies take advantage of the benefits of big data technologies. Given the perception that governments operate on a bias favoring the status quo, it may come as a surprise that U.S. government agencies are slowly bu...