Newest Mozilla browser sets a download record as Yahoo employees defect at a seemingly record pace. Also: The broadband hookup.
While faster performance and better memory handling are sigificant Firefox 3 improvements, the real star is its Smart Location Bar, better known as the "awesome bar," which lets users type real words rather than sometimes-abstruse URL addresses to call up Web sites.
Other features of Firefox include a prominent warning when a user tries to open a page that has been shown to host malware; offline data access, a feature that can make Web applications usable, even when the network is unavailable; a better full-page zoom feature that devotes maximum screen real estate to the browser; and a star button to quickly add bookmarks. Read the in-depth review by CNET's Robert Vamosi here.)
The foundation was aiming to set a 24-hour download record with Firefox's release, and, after site issues delayed the release for nearly an hour, Mozilla said
It's likely, however, that the majority of those who downloaded Firefox 3 at this stage will just use it to replace Firefox 2, not a competitor such as Microsoft's still-dominant Internet Explorer or Apple's third-place Safari.
As the Web transforms from a static repository of content into a foundation for applications such as word processors and graphics editors,
Yahoo bleeding executives
A Delaware court
The shareholders had sought to have a trial on the severance plans, prior to Yahoo's annual shareholders meeting on August 1, at which time investor activist Carl Icahn is currently planning to run a dissident slate to unseat Yahoo's entire board. The pension funds were concerned that unless the severance plans were invalidated, a successful election by Icahn would set off the first of two triggers needed to activate the plans.
If Microsoft was holding out any hope of enlisting Icahn to its side of the table with a partial acquisition of the search pioneer's business, Icahn apparently isn't budging. Icahn, as quoted in a Reuters report, said he believed Yahoo's advertising partnership with Google "
Icahn, in the interview, declined to comment on whether he would continue with his proxy fight to unseat Yahoo's entire board with his own slate of dissident directors, or scale it back and seek only a minority representation on Yahoo's board.
Having failed to buy all of Yahoo, or even its search business, Microsoft is now looking to take an even more piecemeal approach:
Think the Microhoo drama is starting to grate on Yahooers? It seems that top executives are voicing their angst with their feet.
Since we learned last week that Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of Yahoo's Network division and leader of many of the company's core products,
Weiner, who is
After this news had a couple of days to settle on the Yahoo campus in Mountain View, Calif.,
Other recent defections from Yahoo include
Making the broadband connection
Sprint Nextel plans to
The much-anticipated WiMax service has been delayed several times. Initially, the company had said it would launch the service in the first half of the year. More recently, it has been vague about when it would deploy the service. It's been testing the mobile WiMax service with download speeds of between 2 megabits per second and 4Mbps since the end of last year in Chicago and the Washington-Baltimore area.
Verizon Communications is also looking toward big cities as the
The company sees cities as a huge opportunity for the Fios service, which provides high-speed Internet service, telephony, and cable TV service over a super-fast fiber connection. Because most customers in big cities such as New York live in large apartment buildings, Verizon has had to adapt its installation process.
Verizon is also
Meanwhile, a group of investors has agreed to
EarthLink announced on June 10 that it was abandoning the project after being unable to find a buyer for the network, 80 percent of which is complete. It also claimed that after months of negotiations with the city and a nonprofit group interested in running the network, it was unable to close the deal.
Also of note
Hewlett-Packard announced a