Online store merger prods luxury goods makers toward Internet

By Astrid Wendlandt and Pascale Denis PARIS (Reuters) – The merger of the world's two biggest online fashion stores, Net-a-Porter (NAP) and Yoox, sends a warning to luxury brands to embrace the Internet with more vim after years of resistance. “It looks like they are scared to try things out.” Sharma said many brands' websites mimicked the appearance of Net-a-Porter's black-and-white portal.

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As Amazon parties on, some large fund managers take their leave

The average large-cap fund that holds Amazon has 1.4 percent of its assets in the stock, down 23 percent from this time last year, according to the latest available Lipper data. They include such well-known names as Fidelity Contrafund, Washington Mutual Investors Fund, Touchstone Sands Select Growth fund and the T.

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Facebook revenue growth slows, costs weigh on profit

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc posted its slowest growth in quarterly revenue in two years and higher spending on research and development ate into profits. Facebook has warned of heavy investments in 2015 as it steps up efforts to expand a collection of products that include messaging service WhatsApp, photo-sharing service Instagram and virtual reality headset maker Oculus Rift

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House passes cyber-threat information bill

By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would make it easier for private companies to share information about cyber security threats with each other and the government without fear of lawsuits

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BlackBerry introduces security offering for IoT devices

BlackBerry Ltd said on Tuesday it is launching a new certificate service that will help bring the security level it offers on smartphones to a slew of devices from cars to smart meters. Certicom, a subsidiary of BlackBerry and an industry pioneer in elliptic curve cryptography, announced a new offering that it contends will secure millions of devices, expected to be part of the growing Internet of Things (IoT) sphere. The company said it has already won a contract in Britain to issue certificates for the smart meter initiative there with more than 104 million smart meters and home energy management devices

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U.S. House seen passing cyber threat information bill Wednesday

By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to consider, and pass, on Wednesday a long-awaited bill that would make it easier for companies to share information about cyber security threats with the government without fear of lawsuits.

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U.S. Homeland Security to set up cyber security office in Silicon Valley

By Bill Rigby SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is in the final stages of planning to set up a satellite office in California's Silicon Valley, aiming to build relationships with the technology industry and scout for talent there, the department's secretary said on Tuesday

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EU Google probe encourages investors in Russia competitor Yandex

By Ryan Vlastelica NEW YORK (Reuters) – The European Union's antitrust probe into Google sparked a big rally in Russian search engine Yandex NV last week, even though the “Russian Google” still faces significant challenges, competitive and otherwise. Yandex has amassed a $6.54 billion market capitalization, mainly by selling advertising against the web browser used on 64 percent of Russian desktop computers. With Russian stocks recovering and the EU looking into whether Google has an unfair competitive advantage, some investors hope Yandex can win more screen space and advertising revenue

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