Google branded top by 'branding professional'

Internet firm Google has again pipped Apple to the top spot in a global brand ranking that also sees YouTube and Wikipedia debut in the top five, a survey showed on Friday. The annual survey by online branding magazine brandchannel.com often throws up controversial results, such as in 2004, when Arabic TV station Al Jazeera was named the world's fifth most influential brand. ...more

Big Brother tops UK search terms

Channel 4's Big Brother was the UK's most searched for term in June, according to Google's latest Zeitgeist figures. June's top ten is an eclectic, if somewhat predictable, selection. After Big Brother, the top search terms were Eminem, cheap flights (it had to be there somewhere), 2 Fast 2 Furious, Justin Timberlake, Harry Potter, David Beckham, Matrix Reloaded, Avril Lavigne and Wimbledon. ...more

Creative to acquire 3Dlabs

Creative Technology has announced it is to acquire 3Dlabs Inc as a subsidiary company pending government and shareholder approval. The cash and stocks deal would see 3Dlabs' high-end graphics technology at Creative's disposal along with a heap of IP rights and patents. The talk is of putting the graphics power traditionally found in a ?50,000 CAD workstation into the consumer market space, and challenge the throne of nVIDIA. ...more

SCO gets approval for resizing its legal wrangle with IBM

SCO has been granted its $5bn update to its legal wranglings with IBM. The company recently dropped charges of misappropriation of trade secrets in its $3bn claim against IBM, but filed that it wanted to add a further $2bn to cover damages from IBM's continued shipping of its AIX Unix product for which SCO had withdrawn IBM's Unix licence. This additional copyright claim has now been added to SCO's complaints, as IBM has not opposed the amendment of the case. ...more

YouTube moves to US mobile phones

Verizon Wireless, the US telco, has announced that it will deliver selected video clips from YouTube to mobile phones starting in December. It is a bid to increase subscriptions to the company's mobile media service. YouTube, the leading online video sharing site which was bought by Google earlier this month, said it hopes to expand beyond computers to phones. ...more