June 27. That’s the day Microsoft will learn whether anything has come of its challenge to the $1.14 billion penalty the European Union slapped it with eight years ago for failing to comply with its antitrust decision. In just over a month’s time, the EU’s General Court will rule on Microsoft’s appeal of the fine, the culmination of a long, contentious legal battle over interoperability. Issued after it was determined that Microsoft had failed to comply with a 2004 antitrust judgment that required the company to charge fair and reasonable rates for its interoperability protocols, the $1.14 billion fine was the largest ever imposed by the EU against a single company, and the very first to be meted out for noncompliance with an EU court ... Continue reading →
The Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), the French data-protection authority investigating Google’s new privacy policy on behalf of the European Union’s 27 member states, isn’t getting the kind of cooperation it would like from the search sovereign. And its patience with the company is wearing thin. So much so that it has publicly upbraided Google for its lack of forthrightness in responding to the agency’s questionnaires about the new policy. In a letter to Google CEO Larry Page, CNIL head Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin said she’s reviewed Google’s response to its questions and found them to be sorely lacking — in clarity and specifics. Answers, too. “For a large number of questions, the elements provided do not give a precise, clear and comprehensive response ... Continue reading →
Longtime Research In Motion executive Patrick Spence is leaving the company, the BlackBerry maker confirmed on Wednesday. Spence, RIM’s head of global sales and a 14-year company veteran, “will be taking on a leadership position in a different industry,” RIM said in an e-mail to AllThingsD. His last day will be June 15. “The sales function will report directly into Kristian Tear, our newly appointed COO, when he starts this summer,” RIM said in a statement. “In the interim, the sales function will report to Thorsten Heins.” Spence is the latest RIM executive to depart the company in recent months, following January’s appointment of Heins as CEO. In March the company announced the departures of software CTO David Yach and Chief Operating Officer Jim Rowan. ... Continue reading →
One of the Wave Gliders leaves Hawaii on the next leg of its epic ocean journey. Weather and wave sensors sit high on a pole above the vessel's surfboard-like surface. Image: Liquid Robotics Twenty-two feet below the surface, the robot glider towed me slowly through clear Hawaiian seas. The day before, a similar glider named Benjamin had arrived in these same waters. Benjamin and three companion gliders had traveled all the way from San Francisco — more than 3,000 miles — powered by only the motion of ocean waves. Before they left California, Liquid Robotics VP of Operations Graham Hine blessed the gliders by smashing a bottle of champagne on one of their frames, asking nature for assistance: “Neptune, god of the seas, and Aeolus, ... Continue reading →
Hewlett-Packard is at least starting today’s earnings report with good news: It has beat the expectations of Wall Street analysts. Per-share earnings at 98 cents beat the Street forecast of 91 cents, while sales, which were thought to be light, came in at $30.7 billion, ahead of the $29.9 billion consensus. Separately, HP just filed an 8-K with the US Securities and Exchange Commission concerning a restructuring plan. It reads in part: As part of the restructuring plan, HP expects approximately 27,000 employees, or approximately 8% of the company’s workforce as of October 31, 2011, to exit the company by the end of fiscal 2014, with a portion of those employees exiting the company as part of a voluntary early retirement program for U.S. employees ... Continue reading →
Hewlett-Packard is at least starting today’s earnings report with good news: It has beat the expectations of Wall Street analysts. Per-share earnings at 98 cents beat the Street forecast of 91 cents, while sales, which were thought to be light, came in at $30.7 billion, ahead of the $29.9 billion consensus. Separately, HP just filed an 8-K with the US Securities and Exchange Commission concerning a restructuring plan. It reads in part: As part of the restructuring plan, HP expects approximately 27,000 employees, or approximately 8% of the company’s workforce as of October 31, 2011, to exit the company by the end of fiscal 2014, with a portion of those employees exiting the company as part of a voluntary early retirement program for U.S. employees ... Continue reading →
Reports coming out of the court room in San Francisco say that a jury deliberating the patent-infringement phases of the Oracle-Google trial over Java has come back in favor of Google. The claim had concerned patents in Java that Oracle had accused Google of infringing when it created the Android operating system. Bloomberg News is reporting that that the jury has been dimissed, and that there will be no third phase of the trial, which was to have focused on damages in the event that Oracle prevailed. More info as soon as I have it. Continue reading →
Image by Joy of Tech Looks like the big Apple-Samsung summit was a total rout. Two days of court-mediated settlement talks between the warring companies ended without a truce, setting the stage for their global patent battle to head to trial in the States. Samsung officials tell the Korea Times that the two companies were unable to come to a clear agreement resolving their differences. Sources close to Samsung confirmed to AllThingsD that this was indeed the case. Evidently the talks began and ended at an impasse, with Apple continuing to insist that Samsung “slavishly” copied the design of its iPhone and iPad, and Samsung demanding that Apple pay royalties on the wireless patents it believes the company infringed. Given the level of animosity between ... Continue reading →
The first day as part of Google was greeted largely with a sigh of relief by Motorola Mobility employees who have been waiting in limbo for months as the deal made its way through regulatory processes throughout the globe. The biggest changes made on Tuesday were at the top of Motorola’s organizational chart. In addition to the exit of CEO Sanjay Jha, several other Motorola executives are leaving the company. Among those on the way out, we’re told, are strategy chief John Bucher, Senior VP Alain Mutricy, supply chain head Mike Fleming, chief marketer Bill Ogle, HR head Scott Crum, operating chief Juergen Stark and CFO Marc Rothman. Also leaving is well-regarded enterprise unit head Christy Wyatt, a former Apple and Palm executive. Responsibility for ... Continue reading →
Apple just updated its Redeem Code page in iTunes for desktop computers, replacing the old banner with a new one featuring iconography strictly out of iOS. It started this process last year when it redesigned iTunes Store gift cards using iOS icons, and later dropping the rectangular card design altogether in favor of a rounded square representations of the icons themselves.It's the little details that can often say big things. Apple is squeezing the visual language of its desktop platform out of the iTunes Store by methodically releasing updates like this that focus entirely on iOS and its mobile customers.via Jeff Scott Continue reading →
