It took a little longer than we’d heard due to some last-minute complications, but Panasonic’s deal to buy almost all of Sanyo has finally been approved by Sanyo’s major shareholders. Under the deal, Panny will buy out some 70 percent of Sanyo for ¥131 ($1.50) a share, making the total deal worth some ¥560B ($6.41B). That’d be lot of scratch even if the economy wasn’t in the tank, but Panny thinks it’ll be worth it to take over Sanyo’s position in the solar and rechargeable battery markets, which it thinks are due to blow up. Er, not blow uplike that — in the fun-filled raining-cash way. You get the idea. Xactis for everyone!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Panasonic to officially purchase controlling stake in Sanyo for $6.4B originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Mozilla has released a small update to Firefox in the form of Firefox 3.0.5. The update includes security and stability fixes, support for more languages, and smashes a whole handful of bugs. If you haven’t updated already, click Help -> Check for Updates to get the update ball rolling.

More: continued here

Search engine Yahoo is to cut the time it stores personal data from 13 months to three.

It is hoping its decision will provide a benchmark for industry. Currently Google stores data for nine months and Microsoft for six months.

International data protection officials have been urging firms to do more to protect the data of users.

Privacy advocates have welcomed the move and challenged rivals to go even farther.

“I would challenge industry to move to 30 days across the board. People should demand that their information is expunged as rapidly as possible,” said Simon Davies, head of Privacy International.

Business needs

A recent rash of data leaks has left users concerned and organisations embarrassed, he said.

“The less time data is online means less risk that rogue companies can establish dangerously comprehensive profiles on users,” he added.

Yahoo said its decision to cut the time it stores information gathered from web surfing came about following a “review of its data practices”.

“This policy represents Yahoo’s assessment of the minimum amount of time we need to retain data to respond to the needs of our business while deepening our trusted relationship with users,” said Anne Toth, Yahoo’s head of privacy.

As well as anonymising user log data, the policy will also apply to page views, page clicks and ad views and clicks.

But the search giant has reserved the right to keep data for up to six months if fraud or system security are involved.

Privacy campaigners have argued that firms are currently keeping data unnecessarily. Mr Davies is sceptical about what he described as “mixed messages” from industry.

“Only last year, firms were saying that they couldn’t go below 15 months but the logic of what Yahoo has done suggests there is no reason why they can’t go even lower,” he said.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation

More: continued here