Yahoo announced Thursday it would pay $1 billion in cash for a 40 percent stake in the Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba.com, heating up the race to dominate China's fledgling online auctions industry.
Alibaba runs Chinese- and English-language auction sites for foreign companies looking for Chinese wholesale suppliers and individual Chinese buyers and sellers.
Yahoo (YHOO) also will merge its China-based subsidiaries into Alibaba, the two companies said. The combined entity will include 3721.com, a Chinese-language search engine that Yahoo acquired last year.
Yahoo will have 35 percent of voting rights in Alibaba, in a deal expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year. Alibaba plans to use Yahoo's $1 billion investment to expand its search, e-mail and other services.
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Taking it to the WiMax: Qualcomm said on Thursday it would buy wireless broadband technology firm Flarion Technologies to expand its own wireless technology portfolio in a cash and stock deal worth $600 million.
It could pay another $205 million if the companies reach certain milestones within eight years of the deal closing.
The purchase could help Qualcomm (QCOM) dominate the market for future high-speed wireless technologies, one analyst said, because developers of mobile versions of WiMax could now have a tough time designing their systems without infringing Qualcomm patents. Qualcomm executives said they believe the combined company's patents apply to WiMax.
Many operators around the world have tested Flarion's gear in their search for high-speed wireless technology, but it has had little commercial success so far, as most operators are currently building networks based on Qualcomm technology.
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Male dominated: British researchers have found that a website's appearance plays a subtle role in whether it will draw more men or women.
In a recent study at Glamorgan University Business School in Wales, test subjects rated the personal web pages of 60 people for usability and aesthetics. Not surprisingly, male subjects tended to assign higher ratings to pages designed by men, and females preferred sites made by women.
But the researchers also found that women seemed to like pages with more color in the background and typeface. Women also favored informal rather than posed pictures. Men responded better to dark colors and straight, horizontal lines across a page. They also were more pleased by a three-dimensional look and images of "self-propelling" rather than stationary objects.
With those standards in mind, the researchers checked out the websites for 32 British universities and determined that 94 percent had a "masculine orientation." Only 2 percent showed a female-favored arrangement.
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Amazon pays up: Amazon.com Thursday said it paid $40 million to Soverain Software to settle a patent-infringement lawsuit.
Soverain, a small Chicago-based company, had alleged that Amazon's website infringed several Soverain patents on network sales systems and internet server access control and monitoring systems.
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Fraud doesn't pay: Former WorldCom finance chief Scott Sullivan was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday for his high-ranking role in the largest accounting fraud in U.S. history.
Sullivan became the fifth WorldCom executive to be sentenced to prison in the $11 billion scandal. His sentence is topped only by that of ex-CEO Bernard Ebbers, who got 25 years.
Sullivan has already agreed to sell the $11 million mansion he is building with his wife in Boca Raton, Florida, to settle a lawsuit brought by former WorldCom shareholders. The house is a lavish, 30,000-square-foot, Mediterranean-style mansion with 10 bedrooms, nine bathrooms and seven fireplaces made of carved stone and mahogany.
Former WorldCom controller David Myers, a key cooperator in the government's case, and former accounting director Buford Yates each were sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
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Unocal OKs buyout: Unocal shareholders on Wednesday approved its more than $17 billion purchase by Chevron, concluding a deal that had been threatened by a richer bid from Chinese producer CNOOC until U.S. political opposition triggered its withdrawal.
Hours after the vote, Chevron (CVX) said it closed the deal.
At an emotional meeting in a small hotel ballroom close to the company's El Segundo, California, headquarters, longtime Unocal (UCL) shareholders and retirees said they were glad the U.S. oil producer was staying in American hands.
Shares representing 77.2 percent of its outstanding stock were voted in favor of the Chevron deal, Unocal said.
Chevron said Unocal shareholders who opted for a full cash payout would actually each receive $30.13 cash and 0.5803 Chevron shares for each Unocal share.
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AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
