George A. Chidi Jr

Plans have been set aside for workers to vote on establishing the first labor union at a dot-com company, after the union accused e-commerce company Etown.com Inc. of illegally tampering with worker's rights.

Auction customers can no longer buy Nazi SS uniforms on the Yahoo Inc. auction site, nor German Luftwaffe WWII model airplanes, now that the company has put a ban on Nazi memorabilia and paraphernalia from hate groups into effect on the site Wednesday.

With market attention focused on its expected poor earnings report due out on Wednesday, Yahoo Inc. put the spotlight on Tuesday on developments related to its enterprise portal software business, including wireless access capabilities.

High-speed communications chipmaker Broadcom Corp. announced Monday a definitive agreement to acquire ServerWorks Corp., which makes input-output chipsets for server, in a stock transaction of about US$957 million.

IBM Corp. announced Wednesday that new IBM ThinkPad notebooks, NetVista desktops, IntelliStation professional workstations and eServer series computers will be sold with "smart" technology that automatically diagnoses and resolves common software problems.

Microsoft Corp. announced Thursday it will acquire mid-range ERP (enterprise resource planning) and accounting software company Great Plains Software Inc. for US$1.1 billion in stock.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission unanimously accepted merger terms offered by America Online Inc. and Time Warner Inc. Thursday.

A Sprint Corp. shareholder filed suit against company executives Wednesday, alleging that Sprint CEO William Esrey and four other senior managers used the failed merger with WorldCom Inc. to get an early grant of US$600 million in stock options.