Deals

The Los Angeles City Council voted 12-0 on Tuesday to adopt Google Apps, which include Gmail and other office software tools, for its 30,000 employees. The deal places Los Angeles among the vanguard of public sector operations relying on cloud-based productivity software. Plans call for installation...

Coming soon to a Sony PlayStation 3 near you: the ability to shoot aliens and bad guys in a video game, then watch your favorite action movie star shoot aliens and bad guys in a videogame-like blockbuster film streamed via Netflix. The movie rental service announced Monday that it had partnered with...

Facebook and Twitter must have felt like the belles of the social media ball Wednesday. Both companies announced agreements with search engine suitors Google and Microsoft's Bing to integrate their status updates and tweets into search results, bringing with them the likelihood of more real-time res...

Oracle's $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems appears threatened by recent developments, starting with difficulties in gaining regulatory approval in the EU and ending with a startlingly decline at Sun Microsystems -- a company that was on a downward trajectory long before Oracle made its pl...

Sprint Nextel is acquiring iPCS, an affiliate that sells its branded products, in a deal that will put an end to a number of legal clashes between the two. It will also bring an additional 710,000 subscribers under the Sprint Nextel corporate umbrella. The acquisition means that Sprint will not have...

The tech industry is getting a boost from Google's 7 percent revenue jump from the year-ago quarter, as well as from better-than-expected earnings reports from IBM and, earlier this week, Intel. Google is apparently feeling confident enough about the economy and its own near-term prospects that it's...

Google and Microsoft are reportedly in separate talks with Twitter with the goal of licensing the microblogging site's rich store of data. The potential deal structures could be anything from up-front payments to revenue-sharing schemes. Whatever form it might take, a deal would represent Twitter's ...

Cisco Systems has made a huge play in the video-conferencing industry, acquiring one of the world's largest makers of such equipment for close to $3 billion. Cisco is acquiring Tandberg for about $26.37 a share in cash -- an 11 percent premium over Tandberg's closing price on the Oslo exchange. The ...

Warner Music Group and Google have come to terms on a revenue-sharing agreement that will allow content from Warner's full music catalog to be used in YouTube videos, according to a blog post by Chris Maxcy, director of YouTube partner development. Warner will be able to sell its own ad inventory an...

Xerox said Monday that it will buy Affiliated Computer Services for $6.4 billion in cash and stock. Best known for its copying and printing business, Xerox said the move answers a growing need to better link document management to the processes that produce them -- including finance, human resources...

After much speculation, Twitter CEO Evan Williams confirmed on the microblogging site's own blog that it has closed a "significant" round of funding. Williams didn't cite the dollar amount, but it has been widely reported that six investors are prepared to pump close to $100 million into the company...

Verizon and Palm are reportedly scrapping over terms of a contract that would give the carrier the right to offer Palm's Pre smartphone. Back in May, Lowell McAdam, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, said the carrier would offer the Pre in January. Reports that Verizon changed its mind appeared ...

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison can be a wellspring of newsworthy comments. Little wonder, then, that for close to an hour on Tuesday, IT journalists were rapt as he ruminated on the subjects of the day in an interview with Sun Microsystems' Ed Zander at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley. Ellison didn't...

The headline on the Official Google Blog makes sure you know what a CAPTCHA is; "Google Acquires reCAPTCHA" is written in the now-familiar wavy, squiggly-style font that you are used to seeing when you want to log on to certain Web sites or post links on Facebook. When confronted with a CAPTCHA, you...

Adobe's planned acquisition of Web analytics firm Omniture took nearly everyone off guard when it was announced Tuesday. Now that the idea has had a chance to sink in, though, it seems to be growing in popularity. "I think it really does make sense," said Steve Ashley, an analyst for investment rese...