IN THE PAPERS
In the papers 11 April
11-04-2008
by Sylvia Leatham
Google defends data retention policy | Deutsche Telekom to gain control of Greece's OTE
The Irish Times reports that despite the threat of a European Commission investigation, the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI) says it is satisfied that the process which led it to vote for the ratification of Microsoft's Office document format as an industry standard was "open and transparent". Following a vote in Geneva, Microsoft's Open Office XML (OOXML) document format was accepted by the International Organisation for Standardisation. Sixty-one countries, including Ireland, voted in favour of its adoption following 14 months of intense lobbying which saw the format "fast-tracked" through the process. The European Commission has reportedly said it will examine the process of how individual nations came to vote in favour of it.
The paper also says that it is being widely reported in the technology community that an unnamed party has been sounding out Iona Technologies' peers regarding a purchase of the company's open source business unit. The newspaper understands that a number of trade and financial buyers are interested in a purchase, but the sale process is still at an early stage. A spokeswoman for Iona said she was aware of the reports about a potential purchase. "As far as we are concerned, they are rumour and speculation and are not something we would comment on," she said.
The same paper reports that Vodafone's Dublin centre of excellence, launched just over two years ago, was quietly shut down last August. Formally launched in February 2006, the Vodafone centre of excellence for personalisation and storage was to employ 25 staff and carry out research and development for the Vodafone group as a whole. A spokeswoman for Vodafone Ireland this week confirmed that the "centre of excellence no longer exists within Vodafone Ireland as a formal business unit". She said this was as a result of a change of strategy by Vodafone Group in relation to centres of excellence, and a failure to get funding from IDA Ireland for its research.
The paper also notes that Google has defended its policy of retaining data on web users for up to 18 months as necessary to improve search results, responding to an EU report that saw no need for search services to keep personal data beyond six months. The report by the so-called Article 29 Working Party calls for increased user notification and warns web search services that failure to do so may be unlawful. Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, said his company disagreed with key findings in the report and argued privacy policies must be balanced against efforts to make web services easier to use.
The Irish Independent says the company that has approached Horizon Technology with a view to making a formal bid is a US software distribution firm. Horizon said last month that it had received a bid which "may or may not lead to an offer". Market sources said the most likely bidder is Tech Data, a US firm which has been a distributor of Horizon products since 1994. One other possible bidder is Avnet, a hardware distributor quoted on the New York Stock Exchange.
According to the Financial Times, efforts by Deutsche Telekom to overturn a Brussels decision that the German phone company abused its dominant position by implementing a "margin squeeze" on competitors has failed in one of Europe's top courts. The Court of First Instance upheld the European Commission's decision five years ago that the telecoms group breached competition law when it charged rivals prices for accessing its fixed telephone network that were higher than its own prices for retail access. The Commission had fined Deutsche Telekom EUR12.6 million.
In other news of Deutsche Telekom, the Wall Street Journal says the firm's plans to gain control of Greece's one-time monopoly phone company, OTE, will create a goliath in the Balkans, Europe's fastest-expanding telecoms market. Under a three-way deal -- to be announced sometime in the next two weeks -- involving Deutsche Telekom, the Greek state and private-equity group Marfin Investment Group Holdings, the German telco will pay about EUR2.9 billion for 25 percent plus one share of Hellenic Telecommunications Organization, or OTE.
The paper also says that Yahoo's directors will meet Friday to discuss alternatives to a Microsoft takeover, with many insiders still seeing a Microsoft deal -- without the participation of News Corp -- as the most likely outcome. Aside from Microsoft's solo bid, Yahoo's directors will likely discuss a plan under which Time Warner would fold its AOL unit into Yahoo in exchange for a roughly 20 percent stake in Yahoo. Another potential scenario for Yahoo is a joint deal with Microsoft and News Corp to combine MySpace, MSN and Yahoo into a separate company, but sources close to Microsoft discounted the likelihood it would bring News Corp into a Yahoo deal.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 