IN THE PAPERS
In The Papers 23 March
23-03-2011
by Sylvia Leatham
Ireland to get 10 data centre projects | Three creates 50 new jobs
The Irish Times reports that Denis O'Brien has said he will decide over the coming days whether he will take any legal action arising out of a report from the Moriarty Tribunal. O'Brien said he stood over his evidence to the tribunal "100 percent" and that he had not paid "one red cent" to former communications minister Michael Lowry. He said not one of the witnesses who gave evidence had said he gave money to Lowry or that his Esat Digifone consortium had won the 1995 mobile phone licence competition unfairly.
The paper also notes that two Romanian men who were part of a skimming gang have been sentenced to five years for laundering EUR76,020 and possessing a camera device used in the scam.
The same paper says that losses at online gambling software firm Cryptologic fell 42 percent last year to EUR14 million, according to company figures. The Irish-headquartered business said tough trading conditions led to disappointing results for last year. Net losses were USD20 million in 2010, compared to USD35.5 million the previous year.
The Irish Independent says that 10 data centre projects involving investments totalling more than EUR144 million are in the pipeline for Ireland, with seven of them in the Republic. According to Construction Information Services research, the largest data centre in the current pipeline is the EUR104 million development planned by Ecolo Data Centres Ltd. Meanwhile, Amazon plans to invest EUR20 million in the development of a new data centre in Walkinstown, Co Dublin.
The same paper says that professional networking site LinkedIn has reached 100 million members worldwide, adding a new member every second of each day, it claims.
The paper also notes that Research In Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook tablet computer will go on sale in the US on 19 April. A version with 16 gigabytes of memory will cost USD499, a 32-gigabyte model will retail for USD599 and a version with 64 gigabytes will cost USD699.
The Irish Examiner reports that mobile operator Three is recruiting 50 people. The company said 2011 was the "year of the smartphone". Three said 60 percent of phones sold in Ireland on its network are smartphones, with this figure expected to reach 90 percent by the end of 2011. The company said the new jobs will support growth and investment and are in addition to the 400 people Three already employs in Ireland. The new positions will be located in retail stores around the country as well as at Three's head office on Dublin's Clarendon Row, where the company is expanding.
According to the Financial Times, a US judge has rejected Google's landmark legal settlement with book publishers and authors. The provisional USD125 million settlement would have put a stamp of approval on the company's controversial efforts to digitise millions of books and allow it to open a huge online store with electronic versions of works that had long been unavailable. On Tuesday, Judge Denny Chin said the deal would have left Google with too much power. Its plans would benefit many, he said, but the settlement "would simply go too far" and would "further entrench [Google's] dominant position" in internet searches.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Groupon's president and chief operating officer, Rob Solomon, is stepping down. Solomon, a Silicon Valley veteran who joined the company a year ago, said in an interview he is stepping down partly because "Groupon got really big". Solomon decided to step down following consultation with Groupon's chief executive and founder, Andrew Mason. "I agree with Andrew that we really need a much different type of operator to take it to the next level," he said.
The paper also says that AOL is folding about 30 of its sites into more prominent web destinations after evaluating the overlap among more than 70 AOL sites and those published by the Huffington Post, which it acquired last month. AOL plans to emphasise sites that generate traffic and have brand equity with users, including Huffington Post's politics, entertainment and business sites and AOL's Moviephone entertainment, music, Engadget and TechCrunch technology sites.
The same paper notes that Apple chief Steve Jobs has been ordered to answer questions in an antitrust lawsuit over his company's iPod music players. Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd of the District Court for the Northern District of California said Jobs may be questioned for up to two hours over allegations that a software update to the company's iPod music players made them inoperable with music purchased from RealNetworks' music store. "The Court finds that Jobs has unique, non-repetitive, firsthand knowledge," Judge Lloyd wrote in his order.
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