VENTURE CAPITAL POST

US-based search giant Google agreed to acquire Moriarty, New Mexico-based solar-powered drone maker Titan Aerospace for an undisclosed amount for Project Loon, an initiative that aims to bring the Internet to currently offline places of the world.

Venture capital firms in the US have raised a record-breaking total funding amounting to $8.9 billion in the first quarter of 2014, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association.

Just days after he was forced to lift the ban he enforced on Twitter, Turkey Prime Minister accused the social media network of tax evasion, and implied that YouTube and Facebook might be violating the country's laws as well.

California, US-based social network giant Facebook announced that it will pull Messenger from its mobile app to boost the usage of the standalone Messenger, starting with European users before rolling out the change worldwide.

According to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index, the selloff of technology shares caused the wealthiest men in Silicon Valley to lose USD11.5 billion.

San Francisco, US-based digital marketing tool developer Kenshoo secured $20 million in a funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures to launch its predictive media optimization platform.

After helping 3 million people in the Philippines and Paraguay get access to the Internet, social media giant Facebook launched the Connectivity Lab to build drones and lasers that will help more people get affordable Internet access.

Just over a week after blocking Twitter, Turkey is now moving to shut down access to YouTube in a bid to stem off the source of corruption scandal and reputation-damaging leaks related to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Singapore-based digital currency payment firm GoCoin pocketed $1.4 million in its first funding round led by former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta and e-commerce site Bitcoin Shop for its sales and tech expansion.

Social media giant Facebook acquired California, US-based virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR in a deal valued at $2 billion to help the startup expand beyond non-gaming applications of its technology.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher, and Tesla founder Elon Musk invested $40 million in the second funding round of secretive artificial intelligence (AI) startup Vicarious.

The Federal Trade Commission and California Attorney General Kamala Harris said Facebook had the wrong interpretation of how COPPA applies to teenagers, the Los Angeles Times reported.

London, UK-based Video-on-Demand (Vod) service Screenburn raised $500,000 (£302,000) in an angel funding round to fuel its expansion for 2014 and to continue monetizing the presence of music and film artists on Facebook.

Granada, Spain-based gifting startup Giftri mines web consumers' Facebook data, including Likes and Interests, to come up with personalized gift recommendations that gift-senders can buy from Amazon.

Palo Alto, US-based late-stage investment firm Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) raised $2.23 billion for its eighth growth equity fund from European and Asian private and public pension funds, financial institutions and other investors.