The Federal Communications Commission gave its approval to Cingular Wireless' $41 billion acquisition of AT&T Wireless Services, completing the federal regulatory blessing necessary for creation of the country's largest cell phone company.
The move follows announcements that Justice Department antitrust regulators approved the deal. Both agencies attached conditions to ensure there is adequate competition in different markets.
The two Democrats on the five-member commission dissented in part on the merger, saying they're concerned it will harm competition. The merger would give Cingular about 48 million subscribers. That would top Verizon Communications (VZ), the current market leader with 40 million customers as of midyear, while paring the number of national cell phone providers to five.
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Bigger than a Hummer: In a trailblazing pairing of robotics and tractor companies, iRobot and John Deere announced plans to build a 9-foot-long, semi-autonomous battlefield vehicle.
Burlington, Massachusetts-based iRobot will adapt the artificial intelligence technology used in its Roomba vacuums and portable PackBot military robots for a two-seat John Deere utility vehicle similar to ones the Pentagon already uses.
The Military Robotic Gator, or R-Gator, will be the first of its kind to use off-the-shelf technology, making it easier and less expensive to produce than existing, custom-made vehicles. While the Pentagon is expected to be the first customer, the R-Gator's developers hope to eventually draw interest from elsewhere for use in everything from responding to chemical spills to patrolling borders.
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Hard deals for a soft company: Microsoft plans to release the latest version of its server software that aims to give companies more-secure instant messaging and other corporate communications tools.
The standard version of Microsoft's Live Communications Server 2005 will start at around $750, about the same as the previous version. An enterprise edition, which can be coupled with other servers to allow for many more users, will be made available by Microsoft (MSFT) starting at $3,000.
Businesses who buy the new software also will be able to pay extra for the option of sending and receiving messages from Yahoo (YHOO), AOL and Microsoft's instant messaging systems, regardless of which brand the user is running. That add-on should be available in the first half of 2005.
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In Google we trust: Google locates almost anything on the web within seconds, but finding the brainy engineers who program the company's lightning-quick search engine takes more time -- and a quirky bit of ingenuity.
As its rapidly growing business creates hundreds of new jobs, Google (GOOG) is trying to lure premier talent with offbeat tactics, including a computer-coding competition and a brain-twisting aptitude test that mixes geek humor with a daunting mathematical workout.
Plenty of people want to work at Mountain View, California-based Google -- a company that takes great pride in an employee-friendly culture that offers free meals and generous helpings of lucrative stock options. But Google remains picky about whom it hires, even as its payroll has ballooned from just under 700 employees at the end of 2002 to about 2,700 workers today.
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Compiled by David Cohn. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
