The founder of financial services price comparison firm Moneysupermarket.com intends to sell up to 6.4 percent of the company’s issued share capital, reducing his stake to about 10 percent. The sale of around 35 million shares in a placing could earn Simon Nixon, who founded the company in 1993, about 100 million pounds ($148.74 million), based on Moneysupermarket’s closing share price of 286 pence on Tuesday.
Read moreBy Joe Brock JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Google and Facebook are at the forefront of a scramble to win over new African Internet users, offering freebies they say give a leg-up to the poor but which critics argue is a plan to lock in customers on a continent of 1 billion people.
Read moreBy Joe Brock JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Google and Facebook are at the forefront of a scramble to win over new African Internet users, offering freebies they say give a leg-up to the poor but which critics argue is a plan to lock in customers on a continent of 1 billion people.
Read more(Reuters) – British IT security firm NCC Group said it had agreed to buy rival Accumuli to bolster its capabilities in round-the-clock operational support and incident management, and develop its consulting business. NCC is paying about 55 million pounds ($82 million) for the equity of the AIM-listed group, representing a 19 percent premium on its closing price on Monday, funded by the issue of about 20.4 million new NCC shares and 10 million pounds in cash. Accumuli is growing revenue quickly, expecting to post about 27 million pounds in the year to end-March up from 16.6 million pounds, but made a loss from continuing operations of 500,000 pounds in its first half
Read moreBy Suchitra Mohanty NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India's top court struck down a law on Tuesday that gave authorities powers to jail people for offensive online posts, a verdict hailed as a victory for free speech in the world's largest growth market for the Internet. Section 66A of the country's Information and Technology (IT) Act was challenged in the Supreme Court by law students, bloggers, writers and rights groups following arrests across the country for statements posted on social media sites
Read moreSwitzerland's competition commission WEKO said on Tuesday it had approved the purchase of online directory search.ch by Swisscom, as the telecoms group tries to compete with the likes of Google in digital advertising. In a deal reached last year, Swisscom is to combine directory operator local.ch, which provides information on phone numbers, with Swiss media company Tamedia's search and information service search.ch in a joint subsidiary. Together the local online directories will reach 3.6 million internet users per month in Switzerland, and the merger will be completed by mid-2015, the companies said in a joint statement
Read moreOnline video platform Vessel launched its paid subscription service on Tuesday, offering programming at least three days before other websites in a bid to reshape an industry dominated by free content on Google Inc’s YouTube. Vessel, which costs viewers $3 a month, was founded by former Hulu Chief Executive Jason Kilar and Chief Technology Officer Richard Tom. “There are a lot of consumers who would love to see something early.” More than 130 creators will provide early access to content on Vessel
Read moreBy Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) – People eager to share personal information beyond what’s on their Facebook profile have another outlet: an online platform launching on Tuesday will let them give scientists information about their genomes, gut bacteria and other biological data. The “Open Humans Network” aims to make more health-related data available for scientists to mine for discoveries and also help volunteers make that data more accessible to more researchers. Open Humans is launching when scientists are increasingly concerned that valuable genetic and other data are being kept under wraps.
Read moreBy Alina Selyukh WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. broadband providers on Monday filed lawsuits against the Federal Communications Commission's recently approved net neutrality rules, launching what is a expected to be a series of legal challenges. Broadband industry trade group USTelecom filed a lawsuit against the FCC in the U.S.
Read more(Reuters) – Amazon Inc’s Twitch unit said on Monday there may have been unauthorized access to some of its user account information, according to the live streaming gaming network’s official blog. Twitch said it had expired passwords and stream keys, and disconnected accounts from Twitter and YouTube to protect the users.
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