HP-Compaq Merger Blasted
An investment firm has urged Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer to drop their merger plans. New York-based Matrix Asset Advisors, which owns shares in both companies, sent a letter to the boards of HP and Compaq asking them to consider aborting their proposed merger. HP and Compaq representatives say the merger plans, announced Sept. 4, are still on.
NetObjects Finds Buyer
NetObjects, a Web software development tools vendor that ran out of money and shut down in August, agreed last week to be acquired by Website Pros design firm. Separately, NetObjects sold the rights to its 11 patents to Macromedia. Terms of the transactions were not disclosed.
Net Music Biz Under Scrutiny
The Department of Justice is investigating whether major music companies engaged in anticompetitive behavior in establishing their Internet music ventures, setting unfair licensing terms of their copyrighted content. The industrys two joint ventures, which both expect to launch online music ser-vices this fall, are Pressplay, owned by Sony Music Entertainment and Vivendi Universal, and MusicNet, owned by AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann, EMI Group and RealNetworks.
XML Gets Style
The World Wide Web Consortium released a recommended version of eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) 1.0, which lets Web programmers define how an XML document should be rendered, laid out and paginated. Adobe Systems, IBM, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems are among the companies supporting XSL.