Good morning tech

EU plan would create pan-European wireless market. The EU will likely back a plan this week to divert spectrum from television channels to create a Europe-wide market for wireless broadband access, The New York Times reports. European broadcasters have resisted the move, but appear ready to compromise rather than risk losing more spectrum to European governments eager to expand broadband access in order to boost their economies. http://nyti.ms/c9wJKM

Industry notes

Apple to stop offering free iPhone 4 cases. Apple confirmed that it would be ending its offer of free cases for iPhone 4 buyers on Sept. 30; phones purchased after that date will be subject to the normal return policy and will have to purchase a case separately. Apple started giving away free cases in response to reports of dropped calls due to the device’s external antenna, The Wall Street Journal reports. http://bit.ly/cRXiL3

Yahoo overhauls e-mail service. Yahoo is revamping its e-mail service in hopes of maintaining its lead over rivals such as Google and Hotmail, The Wall Street Journal reports. The changes are expected to speed up service while increasing integration with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The rising popularity of mobile devices and Google’s Gmail have lead to declining page views for Yahoo, which still has more visitors that the next two e-mail providers combined. http://bit.ly/9sMtaw

Search engines increasingly turn to social media. The New York Times reports websites with search components are increasingly allowing users to see what their friends and family are reading, buying or searching for. Sites from Amazon to Netflix allow users to see which products or items have drawn their friends’ and families’ interest, adding a social component to shopping online. Experts expect the trends to continue as the search engines increasingly shift to personalized and real-time search results. http://nyti.ms/czo4s5

HP near deal to buy ArcSight for $1.5 billion. Bloomberg is reporting that Hewlett-Packard is near an agreement to buy security software firm ArcSight for $1.5 billion in cash. The deal, which could be announced as soon as Monday, comes shortly after HP won a heated bidding war with rival Dell over the high-end security firm 3PAR. This latest move is also expected to help HP in the rapidly growing market for remote data storage. http://bit.ly/cYAzz9

SAID

“If you’re worried, don’t worry about Google, worry about your Internet service provider. Someone like Comcast … knows far more about you than Google does.”

—Tech pundit Leo Laporte reacting to an attack ad showing Google chief executive Eric Schmidt as a creepy ice cream truck driver preying on users’ private data.

WATERCOOLER

FYI — It’s Cyborg month. September 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of when the term was coined. To celebrate, a group of writers has started a website that will publish 50 writings about cyborgs this month. Hashtag: #50cyborgs