MICROSOFT

U.S. stocks rallied in early trade on Wednesday as strong data on private payrolls, and better-than-expected manufacturing reports from China and Europe buoyed sentiment.

Congress is looking at whether a do not track law, while internet advertisers and web software companies craft a response.

As US Supreme Court agreed yesterday to give Microsoft a hearing related to a 2009 court order that required it to pay $290 million to i4i for patent infringement related to its high-profile product Microsoft Word, Microsoft itself has been on a buying spree collecting patents that cover a range of its products.

The European Commission has decided to probe Google Inc. after complaints by search service providers about unfavourable treatment of their services in Google's search results along with an alleged preferential placement of Google's own services.

As the stock market focuses its gaze upon the holiday shopping season, two of the most prominent companies in the retail sector that may attract much attention are Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) and Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT).

The top pre-market NASDAQ stock market losers are: Aixtron AG, CROCS, Randgold Resources, Intel, Baidu, Dell, Joy Global, Microsoft, and Amazon.com.

Microsoft announced its gains in mindshare with 15,000 developers building apps for its recently launched Windows Phone 7.

Netflix has moved its video-on-demand streaming service to the cloud, taking its datacenter to Amazon Web Services EC2 (AWC), citing the need for agility and the high cost of running Oracle on IBM as its primary motive.

Windows Phone 7 saw 80 per cent increase in the number of developers registering apps and games with the platform in two months since its launch, Todd Brix, Senior Director for Windows Marketplace at Microsoft, wrote in the official blog.

Novell's Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon said on Wednesday that UNIX copyrights are in Novell's hands, quieting fears that Microsoft had clinched its UNIX copyrights.

Microsoft has announced price changes to Microsoft Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) which will be effective from January 2011.

PC giant Hewlett Packard is probably going to sign a mega customer relationship management deal with Salesforce.com for about 35,000 to 40,000 seats, a move that might end up replacing Oracle Siebel as its CRM provider.

As cloud wars between Google and Microsoft intensify, Google has thrown a bait at Microsoft users by announcing the launch of a plug-in that enables users to sync their Microsoft Office docs with Google docs.

It’s the status updates of travelers on various social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter that is helping them keep in touch with friends and family while on the go, according to a global survey conducted by Sheraton Hotels & Resorts.

Attachmate Corp, an investment group owned by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo, said it will buy networking solutions company Novell, Inc. for about $2.2 billion.

Internet search engine Google has played down its rivalry with social networking site Facebook, but said social media was part of its strategy and would be embedded in many of its products.

Amazon's Christmas bonanza includes Motorola Droid X, HTC Droid Incredible, Motorola Droid Pro, BlackBerry Bold which are up for grabs at $0.01 courtesy Verizon.

The US guest workers programs design needs an immediate and substantial in the wake of high unemployment in the nation.

iPhone, just three years old and already attained cult status, has catapulted Apple (AAPL) to one of the largest technology companies in the world.

Credit Suisse upgraded chip maker Qualcomm to outperform from neutral and raised profit estimates of the company, citing improved visibility on earnings growth.

Dell has put an end to its much-touted hybrid tablet wait; the 10-inch Inspiron Duo is up for grabs at $549.