Ben Crawford was asleep 12,000 km (7,500 miles) from Google Inc's Mountain View, California headquarters this week when the Internet giant unveiled its new face. Crawford, chief executive of London-based CentralNIC Group Plc, woke up in Sydney to learn that the domain powered by his company – .xyz – would host the website of Google's new company, Alphabet Inc.
Read moreGoogle Inc , the world's most popular Internet search engine, has been given an extra two weeks to counter European Union charges of abusing its market power in a dozen EU countries and stave off a possible billion-euro fine. The European Commission has extended the deadline for replying to the charges to Aug. 31 from July 17, a Google spokesman said on Thursday
Read moreMcDonald's has apologized for an incident in which workers in one of the U.S. burger chain's French franchises appeared to be threatened with the sack for feeding homeless people. A photograph circulating on social media showed a notice pinned up at the McDonald's in Hyeres near Marseille in southern France, reading: “After an incident on July 25th, it is absolutely forbidden to provide food to vagrants, as a reminder, the team's meals should be eaten on the premises
Read moreBy Eric Auchard and Leila Abboud FRANKFURT/PARIS (Reuters) – Facebook is gaining ground on Google's YouTube as an outlet for big companies to market their products via online videos, the fastest growing category of Internet ads, a report published on Monday said. The competition for video viewers opens up a new front in the clash between the two web giants that already compete in other types of advertising given their appeal to young and international consumers, Ampere Analysis said in a study.
Read moreSurging growth in advertising via mobile phones and tablet computers will help Internet advertising overtake television as the dominant medium for global ad spending by 2017, a leading media buyer forecasts. Zenith Optimedia, owned by advertising agency Publicis, said on Monday that it expects mobile advertising – via smartphones, iPads and other tablet computers – to more than double its share of global ad spending between 2014 and 2017, to 12.9 percent.
Read moreAround 1,400 passengers of the Polish airline LOT were grounded at Warsaw's Chopin airport on Sunday after hackers attacked the airline ground computer systems used to issue flight plans, the company said. The computer system was hacked in the afternoon and fixed after around five hours, during which 10 of the state-owned carrier's national and international flights were canceled and about a dozen more delayed, spokesman Adrian Kubicki said
Read moreBy Simon Jessop LONDON (Reuters) – London-based Abacas has launched asset-backed coins (ABCs) that will allow investors to trade a range of assets on a digital exchange, the company’s chief operating officer Morgan McDonnell said on Monday. Rather than supplant the fund firms that buy and sell stocks, bonds and other assets on behalf of investors, Abacas has designed a new trading environment in which investors will be able to trade a range of assets using ABCs
Read moreA popular Zambian singer was arrested on Monday after being accused by supporters of President Edgar Lungu of mocking the leader in a song that police said could provoke public clashes. Singing in a local language, musician Fumba Chama, also known as Pilato, mocks a man named Lungu who the lyrics say has no ideas but carries a suitcase full of bottles of whisky.
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