Stories about: Wall Street

As the US markets take a break for the long Independence Day weekend, economic worries and a disastrous June on the markets are battering shares of high-fliers including Apple, Google and Amazon, underscoring concerns about tech-sector growth.

Microsoft is seeking partners including Time Warner and News Corp. in a new bid to acquire Yahoo's search business, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Patent trolls beware: Some of the tech industry's biggest names are banding together to run you out of court.

Salesforce is developing an e-commerce engine called Force.com Checkout, but for now only "native" applications that are built on its Force.com development platform -- as opposed to ones developed with other tools and then integrated with Salesforce -- can join the pilot program.

The contrast between old and new software couldn't have been stronger this week.

Showing strong growth amid a worldwide economic downturn, Oracle on Wednesday reported fourth-quarter revenues of US$7.2 billion, a 24 percent rise compared to the same quarter last year, and total revenue for fiscal 2008 of $22.4 billion.

As the dynamic duo steering Microsoft together for the past 28 years, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have been a near-unstoppable team, combining Gates's technical vision and will to power with Ballmer's salesmanship and rousing, if polarizing, personality.

Bill Gates didn't see much of Steve Ballmer anymore, now that Bill was skipping most of the board meetings. But when they met they'd share a good laugh. After all, although things went pretty much according to plan, they never imagined the company would reach such a peak. Good ol' MSFT was now bigger, in terms of market cap, than any company in the US. If it weren't for the Chinese banks, they'd be kings of the world.

Visa Tuesday unveiled the Visa Business Network, an application built on Facebook to help businesses network and drive new business -- while generating US$2 million in advertising revenue for Facebook.

Google wants to make it easier for marketers to pick appropriate Web sites for their online ads with a new tool it announced Tuesday called Ad Planner.

Mobile phones designed around Google's Android software may not be available until the fourth quarter of this year, and some companies are struggling to even meet that deadline, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, citing unidentified sources.