Stories by Grant Gross

China Oceanwide Holdings Group and China-based IDG Capital have agreed to acquire tech journalism pioneer International Data Group, publisher of PCWorld, Computerworld, and hundreds of other tech publications worldwide.

Google has acquired a 3-year-old eye-tracking company focused on virtual and augmented reality, signaling the tech giant's interest in the immersive technologies.

Google plans to acquire API management vendor Apigee in a US$625 million deal that will give the search giant secure and multilanguage API tools used by companies bringing more and more of their services online.

Makers of wearable computing devices will ship 110 million products in 2016, a big increase from 2015, with smartwatches accounting for about a quarter of those sales, IDC predicted.

Online entertainment network Machinima has reached a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for failing to disclose it paid people to produce endorsement videos for the Xbox One gaming console.

EBay has reached a deal to sell its enterprise unit, a division focused on building and running online shopping sites for bricks-and-mortar retailers, for less than half than it paid four years ago.

Twitter is testing a way for its users to purchase digital music and other products through the social networking application, with the goal of making mobile shopping easier, the company said in a blog post.

A coalition of consumer and privacy groups will ask a U.S. court to reject a settlement that allows Facebook to use minors' pictures in advertisements on the site without their parents' consent.

The French government's privacy watchdog has fined Google €150,000 (US$204,000) over changes the company made to its privacy policy in March 2012.

Google has asked the court overseeing terrorism-related surveillance programs at the U.S. National Security Agency to allow the company to publish information on the number of surveillance requests it receives.

The US-based Digital Advertising Alliance, a coalition of online advertising networks and companies, will soon release guidelines for the use of targeted advertising on mobile devices, although it's been difficult to come up with standards in the diverse mobile marketplace, members of the DAA said.

Internet users overwhelmingly enjoy free Web content supported by advertising, and they'd rather see advertisements targeted toward their interests than random ads, according to a survey released by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA).