Google builds big data plant

The New York Times (NYT) has uncovered the new plant that Google is building on the Oregon-Washington state border, 80 miles from Portland in an area described as 'barren desert'. The NYT notes that the Internet search pioneer is building 'a computing center as big as two football fields, with twin cooling plants protruding four stories into the sky'. While Google is already ahead of its main rivals, Yahoo! and Microsoft, when it comes to data processing power, the new plant demonstrates 'extraordinary ambition'. ...more

Microsoft casts its .NET over eBay

eBay and Microsoft have announced a strategic alliance to integrate their online offerings. Three initiatives have been agreed. The first will see eBay supporting Microsoft . ...more

Not in my .eu

The European Commission asks for advice on how to protect the .eu top level domain from cyber-squatters. As part of its Interactive Policy Making initiative, the EC is seeking the views of those who have experienced the problems of trying to wrangle domain names from those that have registered them without any connection or legitimate interest. ...more

UK broadband ranks among the most expensive

ADSL broadband connections in the UK are among the more expensive in the Europe, the US and the Pacific Rim, according to a new survey by ADSL Guide. By adding downstream and upstream speeds together, the website has calculated an average price in Euro cents for each Kilobit per second, and the UK comes 18th, at 3.5/Kbps. ...more

AOL backs Mozilla with $2mn donation

The future of the open source Mozilla Web browser - and its Firebird and Camino derivatives - appears assured for the foreseeable future with the news that AOL has made a $2mn donation to the new Mozilla Foundation. The foundation has been established to 'promote the distribution and adoption' of Mozilla-based applications, which include the Thunderbird email client as well as the aforementioned browsers. Sun Microsystems and Red hat Linux will also continue to add their support. ...more