Last month, AT&T withdrew its bid to purchase T-Mobile USA from Duetsche Telekom after a lot of criticism, especially from the Department of Justice and the FCC. The merger did receive a lot of support, but criticism proved to be louder.

In December 2011, the IT job market grew by 15,300 jobs, which is part of a general upward trend according to a report by TechServe Alliance. This figure encumpasses IT service firms, suppliers, clients, and consultants. This is almost a …

On the heels of news that Apple’s iPhone interest among consumers is sustaining unprecedentedly high levels, Apple can enjoy one more round on the house of good news today: shares of the company briefly surpassed the $427 mark twice today, …

According to the Employment Situation Summary released earlier this month from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate is 8.6 percent, which means 13.3 million people are unemployed. In other words, a lot of people are clearly struggling.

The Best Degrees, an organization aimed at helping people find the best degrees to meet their particular career goals, has put out a report listing what it says are the top 51 degrees that currently offer the best overall job …

Facebook has a lot going for it lately.

Facebook is reportedly planning on expanding its staff by up to 50% this year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivered this news to Bloomberg, saying the economy has provided a "great environment" for them, because nobody else has been hiring.

comScore has released its Q2 retail eComerce sales estimates, which indicate that US online retail spending totaled $30.2 billion, which is 1% less than the same period last year. This is only the 2nd time eCommerce spending has been lower for the same quarter than the previous year.

It doesn’t look like too many people plan to do their back-to-school shopping online. eMarketer looks at a combination of studies from BIGresearch and the National Retail Federation, Deloitte, and OfficeMax. These studies paint similar pictures, and they just don’t show too many intentions from parents to turn to the web as the school year draws near.

While it should come as no surprise, Apple is doing very well, thank you. Amidst all of the gloom and doom, the hand wringing and the concern over the future, Apple is simply rolling along as if to say “What recession?” In what will likely be a classic case study in business schools for the future, Apple has taken an approach to the market that is so revolutionary that it has to be examined. You see, they are providing high quality products that fill needs for their customers.

Google releases their Q2 earnings today.  It will be interesting to see how their results will be received on Wall St. for a number of reasons. Google is one of those companies that people measure the economy as a whole against to some extent. As such, today has sort of a groundhog day kind of feel to me.  I don’t typically spend a lot of time watching economic news – even in good times, but i’ll be paying a little more attention to it today.

Google and the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology have signed a $10 million contract regarding business and workforce development in Egypt. Egyptian Minister of CIT, Dr. Tarek Kamel came to Washington D.C. this week with the goal of reinforcing bilateral relations between Egypt and the US, a representative for the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) tells WebProNews.

I know you’re tired of hearing the same old “the economy is going down the tubes” sob story, so I brought you something different today—a company that’s actually increasing its advertiser base. And not just any company—a social media company (and you know how tough it is to really make money there—you know, other thank from VCs).

More than half (55%) of IT professionals say the economy has changed the role of IT and 51 percent say that budget limitations are the biggest barrier to their innovation, according to a new study released by Microsoft and conducted by Harris Interactive.

Google says AdWords’ real-time targeting and reporting are ideal for finding an efficient way to reach customers in the economic downturn. The company has detailed six tactics for maximizing your AdWords investment.

1. Focus your ads on low prices and savings.

Update: VentureBeat reports: "We’ve learned that Massive, the company’s in-game advertising business, suffered something like 75 percent layoffs."

The nightly news paints a dreary picture. Whether it’s due to a freeze in the credit markets, rising unemployment rates, or just plain nerves, consumers are keeping their wallets closer than ever. At the same time, marketing and advertising budgets are being slashed and executives are demanding measurable, meaningful media from their campaigns. Each marketing dollar must go further. Sales are more valuable than ever. So, what are marketing managers to do to meet such demands?

Searches for a number of terms related to the economic downturn have shown significant gains in the past year, according to comScore.

The most notable increases were searches relating to the declining job market, including searches using the term "unemployment" (up 206 percent to 8.2 million searches) and "unemployment benefits" (up 247 percent to 748,000 searches).

Between the decline in newspaper performance and the dominance of financial reporting in the news, you would think that online financial publications would be one area that is flourishing in this economic downturn.

For the first time in three years, overall customer satisfaction with e-commerce has fallen, ending steady growth over the same period, according ForeSee Results’ annual American Customer Satisfaction Index. At the bottom of the customer satisfaction barrel: eTrade, eBay, and Priceline.

It’s tough to keep things quiet these days, especially with all that Twittering. Unnamed engineers drowning their overhead redundancy woes over the weekend passed on the news—with documentation—to a Berkeley grad student Bay Area executive that Google was trying to keep engineer layoffs out of the press.

It looks like Microsoft will be halting construction of new buildings around its Redmond headquarters. According to SeattlePI.com, an internal powerpoint presentation outlines plans. Joseph Tartakoff reports: