eBay Inc. has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration. Here’s the rest of the release: The acquisition will strengthen eBay’s global marketplace and payments platform, while opening several new lines of business and creating significant… Read More »
You’re probably getting bored of spam statistics by now, and I wouldn’t blame you. But here’s another milestone, courtesy of MessageLabs, who monitor this kind of thing: December was a new record, they say, for the ratio of spam to ordinary email. In that month, MessageLabs scanned some 463 million emails and found that 1… Read More »
The Sims Online – an Internet-only world where ordinary folk can take on another persona and interact with other folk virtually — seems to be exhibiting all the signs of the real world, with a twist. Salon carries an article about a Sims community called Alphaville, and some of its citizens, including an academic called… Read More »
There’s more spam-trojan-banking scams around: these are emails that look like legit communications from your bank manager. Australia is the probably source of a new one discovered in the last 24 hours, according to MessageLabs, which at least looks plausible because it says your credit application has been rejected. (I know the feeling.) If… Read More »