Microsoft Corp. plans to acquire aQuantive Inc., a digital marketing services agency, for around US$6 billion in order to grow its Internet advertising business, it was announced Friday.

Oracle Corp. plans to pay US$495 million to buy Agile Software Corp., a maker of product lifecycle management software.

Less than one week after disclosing a US$611 million first-quarter loss, chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) Monday said it hopes to raise up to $2.2 billion through the sale of convertible notes to institutional investors.

TDK Corp. has agreed to sell its recording media division to Imation Corp. for US$300 million in cash and shares, the companies said Thursday.

Intel Corp. demonstrated its fastest multi-core processor yet at the Spring Intel Development Forum (IDF) in Beijing on Tuesday, an 80-core processor that hit a speedy 2-teraflops (trillions of floating point operations per second) in a demonstration.

The man given much of the credit for overseeing the development of Microsoft Corp.'s Word software blasted into space over the weekend as the fifth space tourist.

Google Inc. plans to invest US$600 million in a new data center in South Carolina, the state government said on Wednesday.

Intel Corp. President and CEO Paul Otellini Monday confirmed the company plans to build a US$2.5 billion chip plant in China. The plant, to be built in Dalian, on China's northeastern coast, will enter production during the first half of 2010.

Still gasping from the resignation of its chief executive in January and an ongoing investigation of its accounting practices, Dell Inc. reported fourth quarter profits of US$673 million, down sharply from the $1 billion it reported for the same period last year.

Quanta Computer Inc., the world's largest contract laptop PC manufacturer, already has confirmed orders for one million notebook PCs for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, a company representative said Thursday.

Cisco Systems Inc. posted net income of US$1.9 billion, or $0.31 per share, on revenue of $8.4 billion in its fiscal second quarter financial results reported Tuesday, exceeding revenue but matching earnings per share estimates of analysts.

Beset by sinking prices for microprocessors and the cost of acquiring graphics chip company ATI, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) Tuesday reported a fourth-quarter loss of US$574 million, down from a profit of $96 million for the same quarter last year.

Still reeling from the effects of a corporate reorganization that included heavy layoffs, Intel Corp. reported a profit of US$1.5 billion for the fourth quarter, down 39 percent compared to that period last year.

Shipments of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.'s PlayStation 3 console hit 1 million units in Japan on Tuesday, the company said. That's just over two weeks behind Sony's original launch plan, which envisaged hitting the million mark before the end of 2006.

Just as the number of Bluetooth device users passed the billion mark, a lawsuit threatens the momentum of the short range wireless technology.

NTT DoCoMo Inc. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. are planning to replace around 1.3 million batteries manufactured by Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. because they may overheat and catch fire, the companies said Thursday.

Google Inc. has laid speculation to rest -- it is buying YouTube Inc. for US$1.65 billion in a stock transaction.

BenQ Corp. blamed poor product management for racking up losses of over ?840 million (US$1.07 billion) at its mobile division, BenQ Mobile GmbH & Co. OHG.

A NETGEAR Skype WiFi telefonja milliónyi regisztrált online felhasználónak váltja valóra a mobil internet telefonálást. A telefont ezen a héten kezdi szállítani a NETGEAR azon vásárlóknak, akik előrendelték az USA-ból és Kanadából. Az európai, ázsiai és óceániai térségben október elején lesz elérhető a termék.

On Thursday, Microsoft will publicly release a "technical refresh" designed to fix the niggling problems left in the new version of their office suite. The refresh will be available free to the 3.5 million people who are running Beta 2 already.