Ben Charny

Members of Google’s enterprise division can thank yours truly for any cake they will may have today, Friday, Jan. 13, to mark the first anniversary of the Google Mini, a search device. Hey, nobody was getting nothing before I interviewed a product manager, and asked him if there were any internal celebrations planned for the […]

Microsoft Corp. this week revealed the existence of a new facility in Beijing, China, where about 50 researchers are developing Web-linked TV ads and other new Internet advertising features. Microsoft said it demonstrated a number of features-in-training during a publicity event in Beijing on Thursday. The video hyperlink project, it said, lets TV viewers zoom […]

Google Inc. on Thursday unveiled two new versions of its Google Mini search device, which has in the past year helped establish Google as a player, albeit a small one, in the enterprise hardware market. The Mini is a kind of computer networking equipment used by corporations to create a beneficial new search feature for […]

A new version of Net phone calling software from Skype Technologies SA, a division of online auction pioneer eBay Inc., has won over critics that found many problems with earlier iterations of the same software. Skype 2.0 became available for the general public earlier this week. Improvements from earlier Skype releases include free video calling […]

VeriSign Inc. said Wednesday it plans to buy online phone billing and customer care specialist CallVision Inc. for $30 million in order to improve its own lineup of products for service providers. The company said it intends to add CallVisions features to the VeriSign Commerce Suite, which handles the complex task of billing for phone […]

Theres a growing consensus that Google Inc. has, as one critic recently put it, “lost its magic pixie dust” when it comes to creating cutting-edge features. The latest example of a clunker is Google Video, a video download store that Google unveiled with much fanfare last week, but has since been soundly panned by some […]

Ads from Internet search leader Google Inc. now appear in the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, it was confirmed Monday, as the search giant continues to dip its toe into new advertising backwaters. Over the last few days, Google has been buying up space in the paper, and filling it with classified-style advertisements from Chicago-area businesses that […]

Search giant Google Inc. is investigating the source of a fake Google site that gives the impression the Mountain View, Calif., company has broken with its long-standing tradition by placing ads on its home pages. The site, http://google.by, was the subject of a report on eWEEK.com early Tuesday that wrongly linked it to Google. It […]

After so many years of dealing almost exclusively in Internet-based services like search, sources say Google Inc. appears to be entering a new phase focused more on consumer electronics. The Internet giant, based in Mountain View, Calif., is considering selling its own version of a wireless networking device for homes, according to two sources, and […]

Google Inc.s search features will be included within the Opera Mini, a new browser for cell phones due next month from Norway-based Opera Software SSA. The one-year agreement with Google, unveiled Thursday, also calls for Google to be the default search engine for Opera Mobile, a cell phone Web browser now available from Opera. The […]