News & Events:GOOG

BRUSSELS--Google Inc.' s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt met with Europe's antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager on Monday as the European Union prepares to decide the next steps of a long-running investigation into the U.S. company's search practices in Europe. The meeting, confirmed by an EU spokesman on Tuesday, marks the first time that Ms. Vestager has met with top Google (GOOG) executives since taking office on Nov. 1..

The Nasdaq has again touched 5000. But don't wait for that popping sound. It is tempting to recall history: The Nasdaq Composite spent about two days atop the 5000 mark back in March 2000 before it began its rapid descent as the technology bubble burst. The index had lost more than half its value by the end of that year and still had a long way to tumble.

Samsung Electronics' (SSNLF) new flagship phones are a big improvement over previous lackluster models. But it still has a ways to go before it can break free of Google's (GOOG) suffocating embrace. Samsung badly needs a hit.

This is an updated version of a slideshow first published April 2014.. Fifteen years ago, tech stocks peaked and started to come screaming back to Earth. These days, they're enjoying another upswing.

Samsung Pay will be more user-friendly until merchants switch to EMV chips. NEW YORK-- Samsung Electronics Co. (SSNLF) announced its own mobile-payment system in response to Apple Pay during its 2015 Mobile World Congress event Sunday. And its product looks like it will have one key advantage over Apple Pay: Because Samsung Pay, as it's called, uses both near-field communication and traditional magnetic-strip terminals, Samsung's payment system will likely be accepted at over 90% of...

Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Priceline (PCLN) and Starbucks (SBUX) have added $1 trillion in market value to the index since 2000. Finally-- after much anticipation, the Nasdaq Composite Index has closed above the 5,000 mark for the first time since March 2000, and it's very near its Internet bubble all-time closing high of 5048.62. Of course, that's still way short of its inflation-adjusted peak, which would require an additional gain of more than 2,000 points, as Lance Roberts of STA Wealth Management wrote...

SAN FRANCISCO-- Four of the 20 richest people in the world-- with a combined net worth that is more than Hungary's gross domestic product-- live and work in the San Francisco area. They also have in common that they are white males. Don't miss: 10 richest newcomers on Forbes's billionaire list.

EBay Inc.' s PayPal payments unit is buying mobile wallet firm Paydiant as competition for in-store payments grows from rivals Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc.. The deal, for an undisclosed sum, will give PayPal instant access to a group of customers using Paydiant's technology, including Subway and the consortium of retailers known as the Merchant Customer Exchange. That consortium, includes Target Corp. (TGT), Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) and Sears Holding Corp., has been developing an in-store...

EBay Inc.' s PayPal payments unit is buying mobile wallet firm Paydiant as competition for in-store payments grows from rivals Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc.. The deal, for an undisclosed sum, will give PayPal instant access to a group of customers using Paydiant's technology, including Subway and the consortium of retailers known as the Merchant Customer Exchange. That consortium, includes Target Corp. (TGT), Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) and Sears Holding Corp., has been developing an in-store...

Google Inc. plans to launch a small-scale U.S. wireless service and will announce details in the coming months, a top executive at the technology giant said Monday. The service would be small in scale and not intended to compete with the big four national carriers, Sundar Pichai, who oversees Google's (GOOG) mobile operating system Android, said in a presentation at an industry conference in Barcelona. Instead, it would be intended to demonstrate technical innovations that the carriers...

Mobile payments leader Bango announces Bango Grid – a new and unique product that enables app stores to launch and manage carrier billing markets with unparalleled ease, as they grow global mobile content sales.

Stock indexes aren't abstractions; they're about companies-- healthy ones, in this case. There's a lot of hand-wringing right now about the Nasdaq, which is finally nearing its bubble-era peak close of 5,048-- even as the 15th anniversary of the top that defined the Internet bubble arrives next week. But the Nasdaq is fine.

BARCELONA-- Mark Zuckerberg says his mission is to connect billions more people to the Internet. But the telecom operators that build networks in the far corners of the world are just as likely to view Facebook (FB) as a problem. They contend that Internet giants like Facebook Inc. (FB) and Google Inc. are profiting handsomely at their expense.

BARCELONA-- LG Electronics Co. introduced a new smartwatch here on Sunday-- and in doing so, opened another front in the emerging battle for operating system primacy among wearable devices. The South Korean company's new LG Watch Urbane LTE is the world's first smartwatch capable of running on 4 G LTE networks. That means users can make phone calls and send e-mails from their wrist, without even owning a smartphone-- and do it all on the world's zippiest networks.

By Jonathan Cheng in Barcelona and Alistair Barr in San Francisco. BARCELONA--With its new Galaxy S6 smartphone, Samsung Electronics Co. (SSNLF) isn't just going toe-to-toe with Apple Inc. (AAPL) on hardware. It is also looking to jump ahead of its Cupertino, Calif.-based rival in one of the most competitive battlegrounds in mobile software and services: payments.

More than five billion downloaded Android apps are vulnerable to hacks, and the number of apps designed to steal financial information from users has skyrocketed, according to a report released Friday. Ninety-six percent of mobile malware targets Android, Google's (GOOG) operating software, on which malicious apps "can pose as benign applications," according to the Silicon Valley-based security company FireEye. The number of malware-laden Android apps intended to nab financial...

Some internships are downright boring, some are far too intense and some are so bad that they make college students change their career paths entirely. But others make students, well, downright happy. According to a report released Wednesday by jobs and recruiting marketplace Glassdoor.com, which asked more than 10,000 interns to rank their satisfaction with their internship experience at certain companies on a scale of 0 to 5, interns at some companies are far happier with...

Take a look at Google's (GOOG) new, futuristic HQ. Google's (GOOG) proposal for a futuristic new campus in Mountain View, Calif. looks more like Disneyland than it does a traditional, cubicle-laden office. Renderings for Google's (GOOG) new headquarters show a campus that doesn't have any desks.

Rivals in Switzerland, lack of health features mean impact may be limited. NEW YORK-- Apple Inc. (AAPL) will host a big event in March, weeks ahead of the Apple Watch launch, giving it a chance to make a final push as CEO Tim Cook embarks on his first new product category since the death of Steve Jobs. It's typical of Apple (AAPL) ahead of a product launch to host a major PR event, and it's easy to be drawn into the excitement generated when Apple (AAPL) sends out its cryptic event invitations.

NEW YORK-- With a winning bid of $25 million, Google Inc. beat Amazon Inc. and others to control the top-level web domain ending ". app". The company won an auction Wednesday on ICANN, the nonprofit that oversees the Internet. The $25 million sum is the most paid so far in an ICANN auction, according to a spokesperson.