Who wins when Google leaves China? Microsoft and Baidu might not like the answer

The big question in China isn't why Google is leaving but who will take its market share. Microsoft wants it, Baidu's a favorite, but local powers like Sohu and Tencent are more likely to be the big winners.

By Bill Powell, senior writer

The days are winding down for some of the best and brightest who went to work for Google (GOOG, FORTUNE 500) in China over the last couple of years. MORE

Apple director Jerry York is dead at 71

A former CFO at IBM and Chrysler and an adviser to billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorkian

Photo: Apple Inc.

Apple (AAPL) announced Thursday that Jerome B. York, who served on the company's board of directors for more than a dozen years, has died. He was 71.

York was hospitalized Tuesday night after suffering a massive cerebral hemorrhage in his Detroit home.

He was born in Memphis, Tenn., in 1938 and trained as an engineer. MORE

HTC hits Apple with wet noodles

Answers charges of patent "theft" with a polite press release and a Google e-mail address

Two weeks after Apple (AAPL) filed a pair of lawsuits against HTC for allegedly infringing on 20 iPhone-related patents, the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer broke its silence. In a series of press interviews and a statement released early Thursday morning, it said:

HTC advocates intellectual property protection
It has always respected other innovators' technologies and will continue to do MORE

iPad pre-orders: 10,000 per day

On track to reach 200,000 units one week after Apple began taking orders online

Click to enlarge. Source: Daniel Tello

After an initial flood of pent-up demand and some ups and downs over the first weekend, pre-orders for the iPad tablet computer are now averaging 10,000 per day, according to Daniel Tello, a Venezuelan blogger-analyst who writes about Apple (AAPL) using the pseudonym Deagol.

Tello has been tracking order numbers submitted by MORE

Is casual gaming destroying the traditional gaming market?

Trip Hawkins sees a videogame business at war with itself. It's Farmville vs. Halo and the winner could shape the next generation of game play.

It was only a few years ago that the videogame industry was tagged as "the new Hollywood," a billion-dollar market that operated with binary simplicity: A game's opening weekend – like a theatrical release – would determine whether the tens of millions a developer had MORE

Deal-a-day sites and retailers get social

"Deal a day" websites are changing the way we shop -- and raising tons of venture capital. Discounter Groupon is leading the way.

Groupon founder Andrew Mason, surrounded by subscribers at the company's Chicago office.

A few years ago Andrew Mason was a public-policy graduate student who had gotten into a social rut. "There's so much to do in Chicago," he recalls, "but I found myself going to the same movie MORE

How Facebook overtook Google to be the top spot on the Internet

What the Hitwise numbers do -- and don't -- tell us about the coming showdown between the Internet's largest web properties.

Facebook has dethroned Google! Sort of! Well, ok, not really. For the week ending March 13, the social networking site got more traffic than its competitor in the United States, according to a blog post by industry tracker Hitwise. But be careful how you slice your numbers. While many pundits MORE

Day 74: iPhone, Droid, Nexus One

Measured by revenue, the Apple's first million units easily swamped the "iPhone killers"

Sources: Flurry Analytics, Piper Jaffray, Broadpoint AmTech

Flurry Analytics' report comparing the initial sales of three leading smartphones generated more than three dozen stories Tuesday. (See here.)

Most highlighted Flurry's discovery that in the 74 days post-launch that it took Apple (AAPL) to sell its first 1 million iPhones, Motorola (MOT) sold 1.05 million Droids and Google (GOOG) sold MORE

The business case for a national broadband policy

That thump you heard in the middle of the night, was the 376-page National Broadband Plan finally being dropped (you can get your very own copy or just scan through the executive summary here).

Not pulling any political punches, broadband is compared to electricity in the conclusion to the report crafted by Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski and his team. It reads:

In 1938, President Roosevelt traveled to Gordon Military College in MORE

The death of business cards?

Doing the Bump at SXSW: A new app is trying to send all those little pieces of paper to the recycling bin.

By Caroline Waxler, contributor

One of the first pieces of advice given to anyone who goes to the South by Southwest interactive conference in Austin is bring enough business cards. And don't be surprised when you run out.

Not this year.

At the 2010 conference, exchanging physical cards (remember those little rectangular MORE