Google abandons deal with Yahoo

Google has decided to abandon its advertising partnership with Yahoo to avoid having a protracted legal battle with regulators, says BBC News.

The deal involved Google providing some of the advertising around Yahoo's search results and would have been worth $800 million a year to Yahoo.

Yahoo was relying on the deal with Google to help to placate shareholders angry about Yahoo rejecting Microsoft's takeover offer.

Microsoft is giving away free software to early-stage Web start-up companies as part of its BizSpark worldwide programme, states IT World.

BizSpark aims to help start-ups get off the ground by providing production licences and technical support for several Microsoft products and, while the licences are free for the first three years, after that the start-ups must start to pay.

As well as helping start-ups, the programme gives Microsoft a way to promote the use of its software at a time when open source alternatives have matured, and as rivals such as Google and Salesforce.com are promoting their cloud platforms for building Web applications.

Nokia plans to cut 600 jobs due to its ongoing restructure, as well as global economic factors, says Computing.co.uk.

"Today's changes are part of Nokia's constant renewal where it is important to be close to our customers and ensure our people are able to focus on the key business priorities," says Juha "Akr"as, Nokia's senior VP of human resources.

Most of the cuts will come from sales and marketing activities in Nokia's markets unit.

Hackers broke into the computer systems of both the Barack Obama and John McCain campaigns and stole a large amount of data, reports The Register.

Officials with the FBI and the Secret Service notified Obama staffers in August of the breach after tech consultants for the campaign detected what they thought at the time was a computer virus.

According to investigators at the FBI and the White House, a foreign entity or organisation is believed to be behind the attacks in an attempt to gather information on the evolution of both camps' policy positions.