Global News Update: Thursday, December 4, 2008

In today's podcast: Adobe to cut 600 jobs in face of economic downturn; AMD says Intel aims to delay EU antitrust case; and RIM's quarterly results fall short of forecasts.

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Hit by the global economic slowdown, Adobe Systems said Wednesday that it would cut 600 jobs and lowered its revenue expectations for the fourth quarter. The job cuts will be made worldwide and account for about 8 percent of Adobe's total workforce, which stood at 7,623 at the end of September. The economic slowdown led to slower-than-expected sales of Adobe's new Creative Suite 4 software, which includes products like Photoshop and Dreamweaver and went on sale during the fourth quarter in North America and Europe. Adobe joins a growing list of technology companies, including SAP, Intel and Sun Microsystems, that have been hurt by the economic downturn.

Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices has accused Intel of deliberately stalling a European Union antitrust investigation through Intel's appeal to Europe's second highest court in October. Intel complained to the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg that the European Commission, Europe's top antitrust authority, was "discriminatory" and "partial" in its pursuit of the long-running case against the world's biggest chip manufacturer. It demanded access to AMD documents cited in the Commission's formal charges and an extension to the mid-October deadline for written responses to those charges. Intel allowed the deadline to pass without responding to it. Intel denied it is trying to stall proceedings, saying that its appeal to the CFI is grounded in "fundamental fairness issues."

Research In Motion's preliminary results for its just-concluded fiscal third quarter fell below its earlier forecast, with economic woes and product delays the prime culprits. The company's preliminary third-quarter results call for revenue of US$2.75 billion to $2.78 billion in the quarter, which ended Nov. 29. That's down from its earlier forecast of $2.95 billion to $3.10 billion. RIM attributed its change in outlook mostly to lower-than-expected shipments of its existing products, which it blamed on general economic problems and changes in ship dates for its products. In addition, the number of new subscriber accounts for BlackBerry devices, previously seen as 2.9 million, now looks like 2.6 million.

A networking problem made Yahoo's Web site unreachable for many users on Wednesday. The problem, first observed at around 11:40 a.m. Pacific Time, appears to have primarily affected users in the eastern United States and Canada who were trying to reach the www.yahoo.com domain. Network engineers reported that when they tried to reach www.yahoo.com, they were sent on the Internet's version of a wild goose chase. DNS (Domain Name System) servers redirected traffic to another Yahoo domain, which was not associated with an IP address. In other words, computers trying to find Yahoo's Web site were sent nowhere. The problem appeared to have been resolved by about 1 p.m. Pacific Time.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.