Tech groups ITAA and AeA may merge to gain lobbying clout

But the high-tech industry often creates its own cacophony.

It has more than two dozen trade associations, with enough similar-sounding acronyms -- BSA, CCIA, CEA and CTIA are just a few -- to give lawmakers a headache.

"When it comes to lobbying, everyone else is Snow White and we're the Seven Dwarfs," Phillip J. Bond, the president of the Information Technology Assn. of America, said in a 2006 story about the problem of too many tech industry associations in Washington.

Now, on the theory that size matters, Bond's ITAA and AeA, one of the oldest tech trade groups, announced Thursday that they were in merger talks. (Formerly the American Electronics Assn., AeA now follows a trend of using an acronym as its official name, much to the consternation of copy editors everywhere.)

The two groups declined to discuss the sticking points in their talks, but Bond said a merger would create the industry's leading association, moving the groups "two or three steps toward being Snow White."

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Jim Puzzanghera

EarthLink to expand in L.A.

EarthLink Inc. is expanding its cable broadband footprint in Los Angeles beyond the 400,000 homes where it's now available. The faster Internet service will now be available to 4 million additional homes in the area.

EarthLink is billing it as an alternative to Time Warner Cable -- sort of. Although it offers customer support and features on top of it, EarthLink uses Time Warner Cable's infrastructure to deliver the service. But it's definitely a lot faster than dial-up.

"It's important to give customers choice," said Kevin Brand, EarthLink's senior vice president of product management.

EarthLink's Internet services will be offered using Time Warner's underlying infrastructure but will be sold by EarthLink separately. Time Warner also will sell EarthLink's Internet services at its call centers.

The EarthLink broadband service will cost $41.95 a month for speeds of up to 6 megabits per second, compared with the $44.95 that Time Warner charges.

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Alana Semuels

Yahoo celebrates 'open' mantra

For the first time since it fought off an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. on Thursday threw open its doors to give the media a glimpse of what it has planned to improve its waning fortunes.

The event at its Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters was all about Yahoo's new mantra: Be open. It featured a lineup of executives who showed off how they plan to redesign popular parts of Yahoo to include more content from elsewhere on the Web.

Executives say the changes are designed to enhance the Yahoo experience for the company's more than 500 million users worldwide and for its advertisers. It's a bid to help Yahoo attract and engage more users while recapturing momentum it has lost to Internet search giant Google and up-and-comers such as Facebook.

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Jessica Guynn