VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Asian markets got off to a cautious start on Wednesday as looming euro zone meetings over Greece overshadowed a firmer finish on Wall Street.

Most Asian share markets firmed on Tuesday and the euro clung to rare gains, relieved that European equities had weathered Greece's election outcome without too much disruption.

Microsoft Corp on Monday reported a fall in its quarterly profit that was in line with Wall Street forecasts, as sluggish personal computer sales dampened demand for Windows software and the company struggled with the impact of the strong U.S. dollar.

Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp search engines temporarily went dark on Friday after Microsoft pushed out a bad code update and then struggled to roll it back, a person briefed on the outages told Reuters.

Sony Corp's (6758.T) PlayStation Network suffered connection problems for a fourth straight day since hackers attacked the video game network, and the company said on Sunday that service was gradually being restored.

Sony Corp worked for a third day on Saturday to restore services to its PlayStation network as the FBI said it was looking into the disruption, which began on Christmas Day.

Two of Europe's top three remaining telecommunications equipment companies, Nokia Networks (NOK1V.HE) and Alcatel-Lucent (ALUA.PA), have revived talks on a possible merger, Germany's Manager Magazin reported on Thursday, citing company sources.

U.S. stocks fell for a third day in a volatile session Tuesday, led by declines in consumer discretionary and technology shares, while another drop in the Russian rouble added to worries about the global economy.

Facebook Inc (FB.O) has stopped including results from Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) Bing search engine on its social networking site.

Europe's antitrust chief will meet Google's critics in the coming weeks in an effort to resolve issues in a four-year investigation which has stirred up politicians and lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Former Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson livened up the technology company's annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, grabbing the spotlight from the current leaders on stage.

When EU politicians call for the break-up of Google, it can sound like sour grapes, the anti-American backlash of an aging Europe envious, and fearful, of the wealth and growing power of young U.S. tech giants.

European privacy regulators want Internet search engines such as Google (GOOGL.O) and Microsoft's Bing (MSFT.O) to scrub results globally, not just in Europe, when people invoke their "right to be forgotten" as ruled by an EU court.

Microsoft sued the Internal Revenue Service on Monday, seeking information about a law firm hired by U.S. tax authorities in a review of how the software company books sales between subsidiaries.

Microsoft Corp's Azure cloud-computing service, which hosts websites and lets customers store and manage data remotely, suffered serious outages on Tuesday taking its popular MSN web portal offline.