Facebook Inc. will sell a US$240 million minority stake to Microsoft Corp., which as part of the deal will also expand the advertising services it provides to the social networking phenom, the companies said Wednesday in a statement.

BEA Systems Inc.'s board of directors has named an acquisition price to competitor and suitor Oracle Corp.: US$21 a share, $4 more than Oracle's initial offer.

Mozilla Corp. late Thursday updated its open-source Firefox browser to patch 10 bugs in Firefox, including three rated as critical, and released the refreshed versions for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

The U.S. Congress Tuesday asked Yahoo Inc. to explain alleged false statements the company's attorney gave in testimony last year.

Acer Inc. on Wednesday announced the completion of its acquisition of Gateway Inc., making it officially the third largest PC vendor in the world.

Security analysts are warning of another malicious software program masquerading as an installer file for Skype.

Sony Corp. has begun production of flat-panel televisions at a new Ľ11 billion (US$93.6 million) plant in Slovakia as demand for thin TVs is increasing in Europe.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies plans to announce Monday it has developed technology that will quadruple the storage capacity of desktop hard drives within the next two years.

The gap between broadband haves and have nots in the European Union has widened during the past year, a trend that might warrant price regulation similar to that imposed on the market for mobile roaming charges earlier this year, the European Commission said Monday.

According to Microsoft, Xbox 360 sales have more than doubled since Halo 3's release on September 25. Additionally, the game attracted almost three million players to Xbox Live.

In a move to jump-start growth in the business intelligence arena, SAP AG will acquire Business Objects SA for about ?4.8 billion (US$6.78 billion).

The U.S. federal government took steps earlier this week to shut down Web sites in California in order to protect the public from hacked Web sites, but new incidents show that the problem is not going away any time soon.

Microsoft Corp. will release critical patches for its Windows and Word software next Tuesday as part of its monthly release of security patches.

Toshiba Corp. on Monday pushed high-definition technology into new laptops, expanding entertainment options for budget users.

Skype's co-founder Niklas Zennstrom has handed over his CEO title to become non-executive chairman of the board of directors of this eBay Inc. unit, whose impact on its parent company remains an open question.

IBM Corp. released SOA products for integrating software applications and improving business processes, and said more customers are starting to understand the SOA concept.

Novell Inc.'s Linux business has soared 243 percent since last November when the company signed its controversial deal with Microsoft Corp.

Sun Microsystems Inc. is taking a page from Microsoft Corp.'s security group and changing the way it updates Java for the desktop.

Laszlo Systems this week unveiled an enhanced version of Laszlo Webtop, which the company refers to as "The Web 2.0 Desktop." The company also is partnering to add VOIP capabilities to the platform.

An online auction of tickets for the first commercial A380 flight is nearing an end, with one bidder spending S$153,000 (US$100,380) for a first-class seat on the Singapore Airlines Ltd. flight.