The video game industry saw its second consecutive month of slumping sales in April, led by a precipitous sale decline in Nintendo's popular Wii game console. According to NPD Group, which tracks video game sales, U.S. stores sold 340,000 Wiis in April, down 52% from 714,000 a year earlier. Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PS3 saw year-over-year sales declines of 7% and 32% respectively. Earlier this month, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata warned that the company was "not optimistic" about demand in the U.S. market, in particular. After posting record first quarter profits, Nintendo on May 7th said …

"Most industries are suffering at present, but few are doing as badly as the news business," says the Economist. And unfortunately for newspapers, it's not just the poor state of the economy that's threatening their business; rather, it's a change in the way people consume news. For example, San Francisco, home of the beleaguered San Francisco Chronicle, could become the first major American city without a daily newspaper. "People under 30 won't even notice," says Gavin Newsom, the city's mayor. Indeed, in many ways, the Internet is better at delivering news content than a newspaper is. It's …

Google is lifting restrictions on the use of trademarked terms in the U.S., a move that Reuters says could increase friction between the Web giant and brand owners. Starting next month, the new policy will allow businesses to place trademarked terms directly in the copy of text ads that run in the U.S. Google says the move will improve the quality of its ads. Of course, the move also comes at a time when advertisers are bidding less money for individual search terms. By letting advertisers place brand names in text ads, Google is hoping that advertisers …

Google made approximately $210,000 per employee in 2008, beating all other large tech companies, according to an analysis by Pingdom, which, in a series of posts, looked at the financials of major companies, including Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Cisco, Dell, eBay, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun and Yahoo. According to the analysis, IBM, Yahoo, Amazon and Dell all made around $30K per employee in 2008; Oracle and Intel made $64K, and eBay, Adobe and Cisco earned between $110-$122K per worker. Rounding out the top four were Apple ($151K), Baidu ($164K), Microsoft ($194K) and Google ($210K). …

Sick and tired of your email service, but worried that switching providers is too much of a pain? Well, Google has attempted to solve that problem for those wishing to switch to its Gmail service. The search giant on Wednesday released a new feature that lets users import their email archives and contacts into their Gmail accounts directly. It also supports message forwarding from your old account for up to thirty days. The new feature supports importing from all the important email providers, including AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail and dozens of others. The feature is currently only available for new accounts, …

Apple reported an amazing one billion application downloads in the first nine months of the existence of the App Store. That may be an eye-catching number, but how much money is Apple actually making from the store? Not as much as you might think: Lightspeed Venture Partners' Jeremy Liew reckons that Apple probably made around $20-45 million from the first billion apps downloaded. Here's how he reached that number: based on conversations with industry watchers, Liew estimates the ratio of free to paid apps in the 1:15 to 1:40 range, suggesting that between 25 and 60 million apps have …

Silicon Alley Insider on Wednesday reported that AOL fired as many as 50 people, all from sales and marketing. According to one source, who goes and who stays was determined strictly by past sales performance. SAI's Nicholas Carlson notes that AOL's Platform-A advertising unit was particularly hard-hit. "From what I'm hearing the state over there is panic, shock and chaos. It was a bloodbath," said one source. The remaining sales reps were told that replacements would most likely come from Google, which makes sense, considering that new AOL sales boss Jeff Levick and new AOL CEO Tim Armstrong both …

Google's $900 million search advertising deal with News Corp. is set to expire a year from now, and has little chance of being renegotiated on similar terms, says Michael Arrington. That leaves MySpace, which accounts for most of the revenue generated from the deal, with little time to fill the gaping hole that will be left by the departure of Google's search advertising revenue. Details of the existing deal have been kept confidential, but TechCrunch recently received a copy of both the original agreement as well as the amendment signed in 2007. According to the agreement, Google will pay …