The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched a probe into Internet search giant Google's display ad business, according to report published by The Guardian.

The FTC is reportedly trying to determine whether Google's DoubleClick advertising subsidiary is pushing clients into buying advertisements on other Google advertising products like text-based AdSense.

Rivals are said to have raised concerns that DoubleClick, which was acquired by Google in the year 2008 for $3.1 billion (£2 billion), is being used to push sites to use other products of the company, such as AdExchange.

Mobile phone carrier Verizon Wireless on Wednesday a partnership with renowned singer Jennifer Lopez to revolutionize smartphone shopping and to better capitalize on the Hispanic market in the U. S.

Verizon Wireless joined forces with Viva Movil, a new shopping tool created by Lopez with Latino consumers in mind.

Speaking at the company's CTIA 2013 media event yesterday, Lopez said, "This new company is here to revolutionize the entire mobile experience for Latinos."

The opera browser for Android, which has been in beta for a few months, is finally available for the masses.

Opera Software has started releasing the finalized version of its WebKit-based mobile browser for Android OS.

Available as a free download from Google Play, Opera for Android boasts a few popular features from the OS' desktop version.

Scrapbooking social network Pinterest has tweaked the power of some of its pins so that everyone, including businesses, can get more details on the showcased items.

Pinterest has allowed users to organize and collect or pin things from around the Internet. It has worked really hard to make pins more useful by adding germane information to certain sorts of pins and allowing users to pin using mobile apps.

Netflix and YouTube consume nearly half of internet capacity at peak hours in the U. S., according to a fresh bandwidth study by Sandvine.

According to the Sandvine Networks Internet Phenomena, popular video streaming service Netflix accounted for 32.5 per cent of total downstream traffic on U. S. fixed line networks as of the first half of 2013.

With 17.11 per cent share, Google's video service YouTube emerged as the second biggest guzzler of the internet capacity in the U. S.

Google is well known for its marking special days and occasions, and this week it added "Atari Breakout" into Google Image Search to commemorate the 37th anniversary of the popular arcade video game.

When a user types in "Atari Breakout" in Google image search, the search engine recreate the classic arcade video game allowing the user to play the game through the various levels; instead of displaying numerous rows of images.

New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has asked tech giants to detail what efforts they are making to tackle the rising problem of device theft.

Schneiderman has sent out letters to the chiefs of Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft, stressing on the urgent need to tackle the problem of device theft.

The city has been suffering a drastic increase in violent street crimes called "Apple Picking," which refers to the theft and snatching of smartphones and other devices.

Amazon, one of the world's leading sellers of both e-readers and tablets, has confirmed that it has hit a deal with Samsung to acquire display manufacturer Liquavista.

Liquavista makes use of electrowetting technology to produce colour displays for portable media players and e-readers.

Confirming the deal, Amazon said, "We are always looking for new technologies we may be able to incorporate into our products. The Liquavista team shares our passion for invention and is creating exciting new technologies with a lot of potential."

Google is all set to announce the launch of a centralized gaming hub for Android, a leaked APK obtained and published by Android Police suggests.

Android Police claimed that it got its hands on a just-released APK for Play Services, which suggests that Google would soon announce the launch of gaming hub for Android.

Code in the leaked APK also suggests that the new platform will offer matchmaking, in-game chat, achievements, invitations, leader-boards and all that. It will also feature game data cloud saving feature that will allow players to pick up from where they would left off.

Software giant Microsoft has announced its plans to make enhancements and additions in Office Web Apps, the browser-based version of the company's popular Office suite, within the next twelve months.

The Redmond-based software firm said that their main objective behind making the planned enhancements in the Office Web Apps was to enable users to create polished Office documents from the very start to finish, all from the Web.

The new features will enable real-time co-authoring of documents as well as of the apps in Android tablets through mobile Chrome browser support.

Two popular apps for windows Phone, viz. YouTube and Foursquare, yesterday received major updates.

The update issued by Microsoft gave a new look to popular video-sharing website YouTube, in addition to a number of new features. The list of new features that update for Windows Phone 8 version of YouTube has brought includes the ability to pin videos, channels, playlists, and searches to the Start screen as Live Tiles and a new playlist design.

U. S. Cellular has confirmed that it has signed a contract with Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant Apple to sell widely popular iPhones.

As per media reports, the announcement was made by U. S. Cellular CEO Mary Dillon during his address to investors & analysts on Friday last week. As per the terms of the contract, U. S. Cellular will purchase nearly $1.2 billion worth of Apple iPhones over a period of three years starting later this year.

CenturyLink Inc, the incumbent phone firm in Omaha, has announced that it would provide nearly 48,000 homes and businesses in West Omaha with Internet speeds of up to one Gigabit per second (1Gbps) under a pilot high-speed fiber network initiative.

The Internet speed of 1Gbps is around 100 times faster than average broadband speeds in the state.

The company claimed that it new service would allow subscribers to download high-definition (HD) movies in seconds and also provide them with instant access to cloud services and apps on demand.

The much-awaited Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock has finally become available for purchase for $299.99.

The Mac accessory, which was unveiled in January 2012, provides users with instant access to a total of eight ports by connecting merely one high-speed Lightning cable to their Mac computer.

As per Belkin's claims, the Thunderbolt's high speed enables users to download a high-definition (HD) feature film in just 30 seconds, or sync one year's worth of constant music in just 10 minutes.

Technology giant IBM on Monday announced the launch of a new appliance that can manage data from a great number of mobile devices and sensors.

Designed keeping the auto, traffic management, healthcare, home appliance, oil & gas industries in mind, the IBM MessageSight appliance is based on the MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) technology.