Orange 'prepping bid for AOL UK'

Orange, the French owned mobile telephone operator, is said to be preparing to bid for AOL's UK operation according to the Daily Telegraph. The ISP, which is owned by the Time Warner media empire, was put up for sale by the company as it seeks to reposition itself away from commodity Internet provision towards a more products and services oriented operation. AOL UK currently has 1. ...more

Microsoft opens 64-bit Windows to all

Microsoft has extended the availability of Windows XP support for AMD's 64-bit processors. The Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems, to give it its full name, works with both the Athlon 64 and the Opteron. You can now register for a free time-limited (360 day), trial version of the beta from the Microsoft website. ...more

BT's ADSL price cuts mean nothing to consumers

Consumers won't benefit from BT broadband cuts. BT's broadband price cuts that were announced today shaved more than 50 per cent of the wholesale prices for business products, but left consumer ISPs with their hands tied as other price changes make BT's fanfare figures meaningless. 'It's nothing but a PR stunt,' we were told by a spokesperson for fairADSL, a small, bare-bones ISP that offers ADSL at ?18. ...more

Google buys YouTube

As predicted, the search engine Google has acquired the video-sharing site YouTube for $1.65 billion in shares. Google says it will continue to keep YouTube going as a standalone unit. ...more

Google tops search rankings

Google has topped the latest ranking of search engine usage, considerably outstripping rival Internet search sites including Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN Search. The latest figures based on the findings of two different Internet market research companies reveal that in March 2002 US Web users spent almost 13 million hours searching in Google, but just 5.4 million in Yahoo and 4. ...more