Corporate & legal

Salesforce.com showed Wednesday that cloud computing can produce serious money--but also that it's not immune from the current unpleasant economic climate.

For its fiscal 2009, which ended January 31, the San Francisco-based company reported revenue of $1.08 billion, a 44 percent increase. But for fiscal 2010, it lowered its forecast to a range of $1.3 billion to $1.33 billion.

In November, the company had forecast $1.35 billion to $1.36 billion, and analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect on average $1.325 billion for the year.

"We've slightly lowered the guidance range. … Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with an AT&T subsidiary in an antitrust lawsuit that accused the phone company of anticompetitive practices over pricing for its broadband Internet services.

The justices ruled unanimously in favor of AT&T's Pacific Bell Telephone subsidiary, which had been accused of a "price squeeze" aimed at eliminating competition for DSL broadband service, Reuters reported Wednesday.

The plaintiffs in the case were competing Internet service providers, including LinkLine Communications and Notelog, which buy high-speed Internet service from AT&T at wholesale prices and resell the service to … Read more

Nortel Networks will be cutting an additional 3,200 jobs, or more than 10 percent of its workforce worldwide over the next several months as the company tries to survive a bankruptcy restructuring.

Nortel, which makes telecommunications equipment, had already announced 1,800 job cuts last year. The company currently employs about 30,000 people around the world. In the 1990s and early 2000s, during the telecom boom, Nortel employed about 95,000 workers. And at one point in 2000 the company accounted for one-third of the market value on the entire Toronto Stock Exchange, the Associated Press reported.

But … Read more

This post was updated at 2:34 p.m. to reflect TomTom's declining to comment.

It looks like TomTom will need to find the directions to the courthouse.

Microsoft said on Wednesday that it is filing two separate patent infringement actions against the GPS navigation company. In complaints before the U.S. District Court in Washington and the International Trade Commission, Microsoft is alleging infringement of eight patents.

In an interview, Microsoft deputy general counsel Horacio Gutierrez said that the software giant has been trying to start licensing talks with TomTom for more than a year.

"They basically … Read more

Intel has filed for a declaratory judgment against Psion Teklogix in order to continue using the term "Netbook" generically. The legal filing also revealed, as a separate matter, that Google would prohibit search advertisements that include the term "netbook."

What's the difference between a Netbook and a notebook? More than the design, according to Psion Teklogix.

Psion "purports to be the owner of U.S. Trademark Registration No. 2404976 issued on November 21, 2000 for the mark Netbook for use in connection with laptop computer," according to an Intel legal filing in the … Read more

Support is building in the British Parliament and from legal experts for self-confessed NASA hacker Gary McKinnon to be tried in the U.K.

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Carlile of Berriew, Queen's Counsel, the independent reviewer of Britain's antiterror laws, told CNET News sister site ZDNet UK on Wednesday that McKinnon's diagnosis with Asperger's Syndrome, a condition on the autistic spectrum, means he should be tried in Britain rather than in the U.S.

McKinnon was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome last summer by Cambridge University autism expert Simon Baron-Cohen. Despite the diagnosis, the Home Office … Read more

WiMax won't likely win the battle as the 4G mobile technology of choice, but its head start in the market and its use as a wired broadband substitute will breed some early success, a recent study by market research firm In-Stat said.

On Wednesday, In-Stat published a report that indicates WiMax will outpace the competing 4G technology called Long Term Evolution, or LTE. But after LTE equipment becomes available later this year, that could change. And WiMax vendors may find a stronger market for building fixed wireless broadband networks in places where wired broadband is impossible or too expensive.… Read more

Google wants to help the European Commission prove antitrust charges against Microsoft related to the software giant's dominance of the Web browser market.

The Web search giant, which recently released its Chrome Web browser, announced Tuesday that it is applying to be a "third party" in the European proceedings, which will entitle it to receive access to confidential documents in the case and the ability to voice objections. Sundar Pichai, a Google vice president for product management, explained the company's reasoning in a company blog:

Google believes that the browser market is still largely uncompetitive, which … Read more

CANNES, France--Virtualization specialist VMware has introduced its next generation of data center virtualization tools, called vSphere.

Speaking on Tuesday at the VMworld Europe 2009 conference here, VMware president Paul Maritz said vSphere would let companies virtualize all their workloads.

"VMware vSphere will gradually replace our existing generation of infrastructure products," Maritz said, adding that the first elements of the new suite will be delivered later this year. "On top of vSphere will be the new vCenter Suite. The idea is in a series of steps to move closer and closer to the management of service levels."… Read more