Harold Maass of The Week The Best of Today's Business

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Boeing, eyeing the 787, tackles labor

The delays with Boeing's record-selling 787 Dreamliner could easily cost the aircraft maker more than $2 billion in extra fees and penalties, American Technology Research estimates. And that's assuming it gets its first plane in the air this fall, a year past schedule. The $2 billion cost is on top of at least $3.5 billion in deferred sales and a steep slide in Boeing's shares. (BusinessWeek.com) The specter of further costly delays helped push Boeing to offer a "best and final" offer to its unionized machinists last night. The contract would raise wages by 11 percent over three years, and comes with a $2,500 bonus for workers if they ratify the deal by Sept. 2, the day the current contract expires. (AP in Yahoo! Finance)

Microsoft buys price-comparison site

Software giant Microsoft agreed to buy Greenfield Online, the owner of European price-comparison site Ciao-dot-com, for about $486 million in cash to expand its e-commerce and search business overseas. Microsoft currently has about 2 percent of the European search market, compared with Google's 79 percent. (Reuters) Microsoft outbid U.S. buyout firm Quadrangle Group, and its offer price of $17.50 a share is a 10 percent premium on Greenfield's pre-offer price. (MarketWatch) Germany-based Greenfield says Ciao gets 26 million unique visitors a month and has generated 5 million consumer product reviews. (AP in Yahoo! Finance)

Dell's quarter disappoints

No. 2 computer maker Dell Inc. reported a worse-than-expected 17 percent drop in quarterly profit, to $616 million, as steep price cuts offset cost-cutting measures. The earnings report sent Dell shares down 10 percent in extended trading. (AP in Yahoo! Finance) Dell said its Asia-Pacific business was strong, however, with total revenue in the region up 25 percent. (Reuters) Dell slashed prices to grow abroad and make inroads against top PC maker Hewlett-Packard. But Dell's squeeze isn't unique. "The average price for computers is going down at such a rapid pace that all computer makers are facing a dilemma about whether to go for profit margin or market share," said analyst Daniel Longfield at Frost & Sullivan. (Bloomberg)

Comcast gently throttles the Web

Comcast, the No. 1 U.S. broadband Internet provider, said it will cap the amount of bandwidth allowed by subscribers, starting in October. Customers who exceed the new limit, 250 gigabytes of data a month, will first get a warning, then have their service suspended. Comcast won't provide a way for its customers to monitor their bandwidth usage. (The Washington Post) But it says the change won't have any impact on 99 percent of its customers, noting that 250 GB equals 50 million e-mails or 124 standard-definition movie downloads. If it's having congestion issues, says S. Derek Turner of advocacy group Free Press, this is a "better short-term solution than Comcast's current practice of illegally blocking Internet traffic." (Reuters)

BEST COLUMNS OF THE DAY

Ditch the 'R' word

Are we in a recession? Who cares, says Paul La Monica in CNNMoney.com. "I don't know about you, but I'm tired of the recession debate." The economy is clearly "in the middle of a very rough patch," and whether or not we're technically in a recession seems beside the point. It seems much more productive to try to "determine where the economy is headed next." And the signs going forward are rosier than many think. Oil has pulled back since July, the dollar is strengthening, demand for exports is up, housing could be stabilizing, and many non-bank U.S. corporations "still have incredibly strong balance sheets." That looks like a "normal cyclical slowdown," not signs of "impending doom."

Ditch the frequent flier credit card

Those frequent-flier miles you've earned on your credit card "aren't worth nearly what they were a few years ago," says Jeffrey Strain in TheStreet.com, "and the airlines' financial problems are making them worth even less." First, there are "fewer seats available," since airlines are cutting flights. And even if there are seats free, most of them now cost more than 25,000 miles. Next, "free" tickets are rarely free now, since most airlines have added ticket-redemption fees. And this is on top of the annual fee for the credit card. You could "bemoan the losses and new hassles," but there are lots of other reward-card options now, so it's probably better to just switch to a better credit card.

GOOD DAY FOR: Robbing the cradle, after the newly strengthened Consumer Product Safety Commission, in its first move, recalled some 900,000 bassinets made by Simplicity. The bassinets have been linked to the deaths of two infants since last year. Simplicity is no longer in operation. Its assets were bought by Blackstreet Capital affiliate SFCA, which says it isn't liable for the products. (The Washington Post)

BAD DAY FOR: Facing the music, after the FBI arrested blogger Kevin Cogill on felony charges for leaking nine unreleased tracks from an upcoming album by the band Guns N' Roses. Cogill, 27, faces up to three years in jail under a three-year-old federal anti-piracy law. Leaking unreleased songs can hurt album sales. "I hope he rots in jail," said Slash, the former Guns N' Roses guitarist. (Los Angeles Times)

NOTED: Nintendo raised its annual operating-profit forecast by 23 percent, to $6 billion, on stronger-than-expected demand for its Wii game console and DS portable game player. Its shares soared 8 percent. The video game market is weathering the consumer spending slump better than many other goods. "Games aren't all that expensive, so they're appealing even now," said Yomomi Yamashita at Shinkin Asset Management. "Something like a car, of course, is quite different." (Reuters)

This column was written by Peter Weber and edited by Harold Maass of TheWeekDaily.com.