Roundup: News sparks market mayhem, gamers hate Spore DRM, DoJ eyes Google antitrust case, and more
With both DEMO and TechCrunch 50 going on, there’s almost too much to report. Here are some of the extra bits:
Old news becomes new problem — A six year old article about a United Airlines bankruptcy filing re-appeared on Google News Monday morning, triggering a massive sell-off of the company’s stock and deftly illustrating the potential dangers of modern (dis)information dissemination.
Spore spawns DRM hatred — The much-anticipated game Spore (see our interview with creator Will Wright) has hit stores, but restrictive DRM on the full version has a significant group of fans steamed, leading to (at last count) over 1,000 one-star ratings on Amazon.
DoJ hires litigator for potential Google antitrust case — The Department of Justice has hired Sanford Litvack, former vice chairman of Walt Disney, to help explore an antitrust case against Google over its advertising tie-up with Yahoo.
Microsoft breeds new blue mice — A new computer mouse rumored to be coming from Microsoft will use a blue LED, allowing it to be used on surfaces that won’t work with standard mice.
Berlin to test electric car charging stations — The German capital will install 500 electric car charging stations, testing them with 100 lithium-ion powered Smart cars.
Gist launches email management tool — A stealthy Seattle-based email startup, Gist, is opening a new email service that helps condense information from many emails, documents, Web links, blog posts and so forth into one location.
Google revisits privacy with shortened log times — User IP addresses stored by Google will now be anonymized after nine months, significantly shortening the company’s previous 18 month policy.
One company out, one staying in for IPO market — While XDx, a Brisbane, Calif. medical startup, has pulled its expected IPO with the usual complaint of bad market conditions, Fluidigm, a maker of integrated fluidic circuit systems for life science research, has pledged to stay on track for its $86 million IPO, according to VentureWire.
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About the Author, Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison writes about cleantech and environmental issues for VentureBeat, with occasional forays into gaming and semantic technology. He got his start writing about tech for Business 2.0 magazine, but quickly realized new media was the ticket when that institution closed its doors in 2007. Chris has also covered public equities and regulatory issues. He originally hails from southern Virginia, graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington, and now lives in San Francisco.