Articles by Rob Spiegel

Verizon posted its first-quarter earnings on Thursday, revealing the company sold 2.2 million iPhone 4 models, Verizon's most successful launch. It activated its first iPhones on February 10, a month into the first quarter. The iPhone was previously exclusive to Verizon rival AT&T, which reported an impressive 3.6 million new Q1 iPhone activations...

Verizon posted its first-quarter earnings on Thursday, revealing the company sold 2.2 million iPhone 4 models, Verizon's most successful launch. It activated its first iPhones on February 10, a month into the first quarter. The iPhone was previously exclusive to Verizon rival AT&T, which reported an impressive 3.6 million new Q1 iPhone activations...

Verizon posted its first-quarter earnings on Thursday, revealing the company sold 2.2 million iPhone 4 models, Verizon's most successful launch. It activated its first iPhones on February 10, a month into the first quarter. The iPhone was previously exclusive to Verizon rival AT&T, which reported an impressive 3.6 million new Q1 iPhone activations...

Young Kindle is getting a library card -- at 11,000 libraries. Amazon announced Kindle Library Lending on Wednesday. The new feature, which launches later this year, will let Kindle customers borrow Kindle books from more than 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will work on all generations of Kindle devices and Kindle reading apps.

Seagate will take over Samsung's hard disk drive operations as part of an expansion of the companies' strategic relationship announced Tuesday. The HDD deal is one of multiple transactions totaling US$1.375 billion, which will be paid by Seagate to Samsung, half in stock and half in cash. This could be Seagate's return fire at rival Western Digita...

On Monday, Microsoft opened Office 365 -- a cloud-based version of its productivity apps -- to the public for beta testing. The beta version contains Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online. The trial is available in 38 countries and 17 languages. The Office 365 suite is billed as an always up-to-date cloud service. Th...

Groupon is likely to select Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to be the principal underwriters for an initial public offering later this year that could value the company between US$15 and $20 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal source. J.P. Morgan Chase is expected to have a co-manager role in the IPO, and at least two other banks want to be in on the deal...

Reviews for RIM's new PlayBook tablet have hit the Web, and so far, they are not good. The company's first tablet, the PlayBook will hit stores on April 19, ranging in cost from US$499 to $699. The PlayBook was intended to be a worthy iPad 2 rival, but according to countless reviews, the PlayBook doesn't pose a threat to Apple's product....

Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced an Internet privacy bill on Tuesday that proposes new rules about how websites can collect information about users. The measures would help protect Internet users by requiring sites to notify customers when their data is being collected and tell them how it will be shared. The bill would require advertisers to let them opt out of disclosing sensitive details such as medical information...

More legal trouble could be in the cards for Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Old pal Paul Ceglia claims that Zuckerberg agreed to give him 50 percent ownership of the company. Ceglia claims he paid US$1,000 to help fund Facebook at Harvard in 2003. Ceglia sued Zuckerberg last July, and in the weeks following the suit he presented a contract bearing ...

Level 3 has announced plans to buy Global Crossing for US$3 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Level 3 will also assume Global Crossing's $1.1 billion debt. This transaction creates a company with pro forma combined 2010 revenues of $6.26 billion, the companies said in a joint announcement. Global Crossing shareholders will receive 16 shares of Level 3 common stock for each share of Global Crossing common stock...

Larry Page took the wheel as Google's CEO this week, and he's already shaking things up. On Thursday, Page placed key executives in charge of individual business units, according to the Los Angeles Times. Page indicated he wanted to simplify product and engineering structures with one executive leading each functional group.The new SVPs will report directly to him...

Flick through your TV guide -- soon enough you'll find 20 new YouTube channels. That's a lot of laughing babies Google is planning to spend as much as US$100 million to produce 20 new YouTube channels offering a combination of original new Internet-only content and content already on the site, according to a Wall Street Journal article.

Blockbuster -- once the king of video rentals -- has reached an ignoble end. The carcass of the once-sterling company has been snatched up for nothing, for its bones Dish Network announced on Wednesday that it was the winning bidder in the bankruptcy court auction for the assets of Blockbuster. The satellite company's winning bid was approximately ...

Texas Instruments announced on Tuesday that it has signed an agreement to acquire its rival, National Semiconductor, in an all-cash transaction totaling US$6.5 billion. This will merge two leading analog semiconductor companies. National's shareholders will receive $25 a share, 78 percent higher than its most recent closing price of $14.07. Both c...

The world's largest permission-based marketing firm, Epsilon, reported on Friday that its computer system was hacked and an unspecified number of email addresses and names were stolen. Epsilon sends around 40 billion emails a year on behalf of its 2,500 clients, which include major banks such as Capital One, JP Morgan Chase, Barclay's Bank, U.S. Bancorp and Citigroup, as well as e-commerce sites. Among the other companies warned about this breach are TiVo and Brookstone.

It appears Hollywood is ready to give on-demand new releases a go. Four major studios are planning a video-on-demand (VOD) service called "Home Premiere" that will show movies that have been in theaters for 60 days for US$30 each, Variety.com has reported. Warner Bros., Sony, Universal and Fox will distribute the digital movies through DirecTV and...

Microsoft is filing a formal antitrust complaint with the European Commission (EC) as part of the commission's investigation into possible Google violations of European competition law. Google holds about 95 percent of the European search market. The complaint involves Google restraining competition by limiting search and Windows Phone access to Y...

Salesforce.com has signed an agreement to acquire Radian6 for US$276 million in cash and $50 million in stock. Salesforce intends to use Radian6, a platform for social media monitoring, to help its clients track hundreds and millions of conversations on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and other online communities, analyze them, and get real-time...

Amazon's Android Appstore launched last week with an innovative approach to selling apps. Amazon Test Drive allows potential customers to try out the full-version of an app free for 30 minutes on a virtual version of an Android phone. Currently, Test Drive is limited to U.S. customers -- however, the Amazon Appstore is not yet available to AT&T subscribers.