Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
Business Sep 30, 2013
Toyota maintains Interbrand ranking at No. 10 in world
by Masaaki Kameda
Seven Japanese firms made it onto the list of the top 100 most valuable brands in the world for 2013 compiled by U.S. consultancy Interbrand. Toyota Motor Corp. came in 10th, unchanged from last year, with a value of $35.3 billion, the best showing ...
Tech Sep 27, 2013
Google's Hummingbird hatches new search formula
Google Inc. has quietly retooled the closely guarded formula running its Internet search engine to give better answers to the increasingly complex questions posed by Web surfers. The overhaul came as part of an update called Hummingbird that Google has gradually rolled out over ...
Digital Sep 21, 2013
Music, film industries sound alarm on piracy and point fingers at Google
by Anne Flaherty
The music and movie industries are sounding the alarm again on online piracy, saying illegal downloads are on the rise and search engines such as Google aren’t doing enough to stop them. Entertainment executives say they have no intention of trying to revive failed ...
World Sep 7, 2013
Google races to keep out government spies
Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the U.S. National Security Agency and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments, company officials said Friday. The move is ...
National Sep 5, 2013
Street View shows Tohoku tsunami, nuclear evacuation zones
New images from areas devastated by the tsunami of March 11, 2011, have been posted on Google’s Street View, allowing users to see how the disaster changed the area. The images include pictures of towns and villages near the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear ...
Corporate Aug 26, 2013
Google adds Japan to new Nexus 7 tablet launch
U.S. Internet search giant Google Inc. said Monday it will launch the latest version of its tablet computer, the Nexus 7, in Japan on Wednesday with a lighter body and high-definition screen to counter Apple Inc.’s popular iPad and other products. Running on the ...
Tech | ANALYSIS Aug 24, 2013
Under Ballmer, Microsoft struggled to modernize
by Craig Timberg
In the 13 years that Steve Ballmer has led Microsoft, literature has climbed out of books, songs have freed themselves from CDs and computers have leapt off their desktops into our hands. An exhilarating new world of technology has emerged with little help from ...
Tech Aug 23, 2013
As promoters follow users, not sites, ads can pop up in distressing ways
by Hayley Tsukayama
Ads for knockoff Louis Vuitton bags pop up on the luxury retailer’s official Facebook page. A Toyota advertisement shows up on a news article about a car crash. Or an ad for Dove promoting women’s “real beauty” shows up on a Facebook page glorifying ...
Tech Aug 23, 2013
Yahoo gets more traffic than Google for first time since '11
There is some good news for Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer: Yahoo has topped Google in Web traffic for the first time since May 2011. Research firm comScore reported Yahoo logged 196.6 million unique visitors in July, compared with its rival’s 192.3 million. The ...
Corporate Aug 19, 2013
A-bomb museum items on Google
Internet search giant Google Inc. unveiled Monday an online collection of items displayed at museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki documenting the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings. It is the first time Japanese facilities have been featured on Google’s Cultural Institute multimedia site, which provides the ...
Science & Health Aug 18, 2013
Wearable tech liberates disabled
It has been 18 years since Tammie Lou Van Sant held a camera. But nearly two decades after a car accident left her paralyzed from the chest down, Van Sant is shooting again — thanks to a device that could be part of technology’s ...
Business Jul 28, 2013
DuckDuckGo chief spills on search engine wars
by Timothy B. Lee
AltaVista, one of the leading search engines of the 1990s, has died. It was 18 years old. It had languished for years before its owner, Yahoo, finally pulled the plug. Silicon Valley is littered with the graves of firms that tried and failed to ...