Reuters Technology

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge has rejected Amazon.com Inc's request that he withdraw preliminary approval of a settlement between Google Inc and groups of authors and publishers to digitize millions of books. In a Tuesday ruling, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said he planned to conduct a "thorough fairness analysis" of the settlement at a February 18, 2010 hearing and Amazon could argue its case then. Seattle-based Amazon, which sells digital books, did not immediately return a call seeking comment. The settlement is designed to resolve a 2005 lawsuit by authors and publishers that accused Google of copyright infringement for scanning libraries ... Read Full Story

LONDON (Reuters) - MySpace expands its presence in the entertainment market on Thursday with the British launch of its music service, as the social networking site seeks to reinvent itself after being eclipsed by rival Facebook. MySpace Music is already up and running in the United States, and aims to combine music content in the form of songs, videos, artist profiles, playlists and charts with social networking allowing fans to share their discoveries online. Access to the site is free, but News Corp-owned Myspace aims to make money through advertising and by taking a share of sales of concert tickets and merchandise, reflecting broader ... Read Full Story

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Amazon.com said on Monday that its Kindle electronic book reader posted its best sales yet in the month of November, as rivals struggle with fulfilling their customer orders. The online retailer said shoppers were buying several Kindles at once as holiday gifts, while businesses and organizations were buying the device "in large quantities" for employees or clients. Amazon does not provide precise data on Kindle sales. Amazon's statement on Kindle's success this holiday season follows notices by Barnes & Noble and Sony Corp to their customers that they had sold out of their e-readers before the start of the holiday ... Read Full Story

LONDON (Reuters) - Google offered publishers a way to attract paying subscribers without having to remove their content from Google News search results, after Rupert Murdoch and others accused it of profiting from their news. The Web search giant said it would adapt its so-called First Click Free program to prompt online readers to register or subscribe to a news provider's site after reading five free articles from that publisher in a day. Previously, the user's first click on any article would be free for an unlimited number of articles, provided the user did not click through any more links from any article. Google ... Read Full Story

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Electronic Arts Inc sees a future where its online and mobile games are as critical as "Madden NFL" and other console games as the company focuses on building core franchises and winnows its number of titles, said Chief Executive John Riccitiello. EA currently publishes more than 50 titles and plans to cut that back to about 40 next fiscal year to focus on quality games. Riccitiello said he could see EA publishing even fewer titles going forward. "Thirty wouldn't shock me at some point in the future," Riccitiello said at the Reuters Global Media Summit in New York on Tuesday. ... Read Full Story