Juan Carlos Perez

The departure of dMarc Broadcasting's co-founders from Google surprised many industry observers but not Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt.

Microsoft Corp. has agreed to acquire a company that operates a search engine for health information, one of the most popular search topics online

Google Inc. is pushing further into the communication and collaboration applications market with a major upgrade of Google Apps, a hosted suite for organizations of all sizes that analysts say could soon become a real competitor to Microsoft Office.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment has agreed to settle charges with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) related to the company's inclusion of problematic copy-protection software in music CDs that monitored users' listening behaviour on their PCs without their permission.

Google Inc. has started integrating its popular mapping service with its controversial books search engine, to let people plot on maps references to places they find in books.

WebEx Communications Inc. has developed an e-mail service for its WebOffice hosted applications suite for small businesses, which already includes a document manager, group calendar, database, task manager and Web meetings.

Google Inc. has dusted the cobwebs off its Groups discussion forum service with a redesigned interface and new features like the ability to create and edit Web pages and upload and share files.

Linden Research Inc. is hard at work to enhance the voice capabilities, search features and navigation interface of Second Life. The company is convinced that this popular, three-and-a-half-year-old virtual world isn't a flash in the pan but rather a credible vehicle for social interactions, commerce and entertainment, Joe Miller, Linden's vice president of platform and technology development, told the IDG News Service in a recent interview.