Google and Microsoft can do the world a favor by stopping the upcoming .sucks top-level domain damn near dead in its tracks. How? Simply by not indexing anything with a .sucks domain extension on their search engines. Or pages that refer to such domains, which start appearing March 30. Such a blackout probably won’t stop ...

I understand it fits Wired‘s worldview, but that doesn’t make it true. I am talking about its latest entry in the “PC is dead” sweepstakes, in which the imminent death of something — what, exactly? — is repeatedly predicted. For decades. “No, really, the PC is dying and it’s not coming back” is the latest ...

If Yahoo! Inc. were still a high-profile company, CEO Marissa Mayer would not have lasted this long. It’s almost like falling up, the way Mayer survives as Yahoo becomes less and less relevant. Nothing she has done seems to have helped the company do more than stay afloat, but that may be all that is ...

Microsoft is out with a free preview of Office 2016 for Mac, software that clearly demonstrates the changes that have taken place in Redmond as the company moves to a cloud first, mobile first footing. Where Microsoft for decades offered only tepid support for non-Microsoft platforms, today’s Microsoft accepts that owning the operating system is ...

A survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds wired residential telephones have disappeared from nearly half of American homes. By next year, a majority of homes will likely be landline free, wireless service replacing wired. How does the CDC know this? It conducts a regular National Health Information Survey, which seeks ...

On Thursday, the FCC is scheduled to vote — probably over the objection of its two Republican members — on Chairman Tom Wheeler’s plan to regulate the Internet as a common carrier in order to assure openness. Clearly, the Report and Order will not end things, simply open another phase of battle. The FCC will ...

This is the first time I’ve ever followed up a “looks like I was wrong” column with one saying “or maybe I was wrong about that.” Just the other day, I called back my position that Microsoft OneDrive would kill Dropbox, Box and the others. I was wrong, however, and my original assessment that cloud storage is ...

For those on tight budgets, standing at the counter trying to decide “which iPhone” is a tough decision. Apple is a past master at overcharging for memory, so the difference between today’s entry-level 16GB iPhone and the next-step 64GB model is $100. It’s $200 if you want 128GB. Apple has recently increased the allowable size ...

This is not how things were supposed to work out. Several years ago, I theorized that once Microsoft, Apple and others got their acts together, the spaces inhabited by Dropbox, Box and the other cloud storage companies would get pretty lonely. When I wrote that, Steve Ballmer was still in command and my prediction was ...

By tiptoeing into drone approval, the Federal Aviation Administration is doing precisely what it is supposed to do: Provide for safe air travel and the safe use of airspace. The FAA does not exist to make Jeff Bezos or venture capitalists happy. If Mr. Bezos doesn’t like this, he should take his potentially killer drones ...