2006 in review, part 8

Dell issues a first battery recall, while Apple investigates suspect Chinese factories

29 December 2006 13:00 GMT / By Amber Maitland

In our continuing round up of the year's top news stories, July and August were robust months for industry announcements and news.

Apple and Creative managed to settle their difference after counter suing each other, with Apple agreeing to pay $100 million for licences on technologies for which Creative holds the patents.

The Cupertino-based company also received a bum rap on working conditions in its Chinese factories, and launched an investigation that proved that workers weren't slaving away to produce the millions of iPods that consumers have been buying.

Most of the news seemed to focus online, with Yahoo and Microsoft joining their messenger service and uniting their millions of users, and MySpace becoming the US's number one ranked website.

“To google” became a verb in a number of dictionaries, prompting Google in later months to issue several statements confirming the correct way to use the word, and refuting its status as a verb.

Russian music download site AllofMP3.com, which has become a bone of contention between the US and Russia, was targeted by the BPI, the music industry's body in the UK, who said that is was suing the site in the UK.

Virus stories proved as popular as ever amongst readers, with a report of a Trojan horse disguised as a video of the infamous Zidane headbutt garnering plenty of reads.

In other news, Yahoo Music, in a departure from the norm, sold a Jessica Simpson track as a DRM-free MP3 file for $2, while Dell recalled over 4 million notebooks in the first of what would be a recurring theme amongst manufacturers.