By Deepa Seetharaman SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's revenue grew more than expected for the first quarter, offset by a sharp increase in spending on technology, content and new warehouses as the e-commerce giant branches into new businesses. The Seattle-based company's overall revenue growth bested the average Wall Street estimate of $19.4 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Amazon reported earnings per share of 23 cents, in line with expectations. Shares of Amazon, which is rapidly expanding its lineup of devices and computing services to sustain its pace of growth, rose 1.6 percent to $342.56 in afterhours trading. Amazon is spending big on a wide range of projects as its core retail business comes under pressure.

By Dan Levine SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Four major tech companies including Apple and Google have agreed to settle a lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to hold down salaries in Silicon Valley, just weeks before a high profile trial had been scheduled to begin. The settlement was disclosed in a court filing on Thursday, which did not spell out terms. The case has been closely watched due to the potentially high damages award and a steady disclosure of emails in which Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and some of their Silicon Valley rivals hatched plans to avoid poaching each other's prized engineers. Tech workers filed a class action lawsuit against Apple Inc, Google Inc, Intel Inc and Adobe Systems Inc in 2011, alleging they conspired to refrain from soliciting one another's employees in order to avert a salary war.

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc's head of social networking services, Vic Gundotra, is leaving the Internet search company, he said on Thursday, three years after overseeing the launch of the Google+ social network. Gundotra, who has worked at Google for eight years, announced the move in a Google+ post. "We pour our heart and soul into our work and it becomes something we love and cherish," Gundotra wrote.

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc has acquired the maker of a mobile app that can track the distance consumers walk or run and measure the calories burned, giving the social networking company an entree into the nascent market for fitness and health monitoring technology. Facebook did not disclose the price it paid for ProtoGeo Oy, the 2-year-old Helsinki company that makes the Moves app. A Facebook spokesman said the price for ProtoGeo, which has fewer than 10 employees, was not anywhere near what the company had paid for other higher-profile acquisitions recently. Facebook has begun 2014 by going on a shopping spree, paying $19 billion for mobile messaging service WhatsApp in February and $2.3 billion for virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR a couple of weeks later.

By Rodrigo Campos NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple has long been a trend-setter whose hot products attract imitators, and now its recent stock split might help revive a trend from the 1990s that has all but disappeared on Wall Street. Apple Inc's move might inspire others, some believe, but only modestly. "It could become a bit of a trend when you see a name like Apple decide to split the stock," said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O'Neil Securities. Polcari said Priceline Group Inc, the most expensive single stock on the S&P 500, is a prime candidate.

Facebook said on Thursday that it has created a newswire tool tailored to journalists, part of a broader effort to be the go-to place for conversation for its 1 billion users. Called FB Newswire, it is designed to help journalists share and embed newsworthy Facebook content that is made public by its members such as photos, status updates and videos. "News is finding a bigger audience on Facebook than ever before, and journalists and media organizations have become an integral part of Facebook," wrote Andy Mitchell, director of news and global media partnership at Facebook, in a blog post announcing FB Newswire.

If you're a porn connoisseur or troll in China, chances are your year hasn't been great so far. Some 110 Chinese porn websites and 3,300 social accounts on services like Sina Weibo and WeChat have gone dark since January ...

REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Microsoft Corp. posted flat revenue and a decline in net income for the January-March quarter. Revenue gains from its Windows operating system and cloud computing services like Azure were offset by the lack of special upgrade offer revenues from a year ago.

Leica is celebrating its 100th year by launching its hotly anticipated T-System mirrorless camera. The fourth line of cameras, the Leica T is a sexy, minimalistic mid-range shooter that goes on sale May 26. You can pre-order it today for $1,850 for the body only.

Right on the heels of another successful quarter for Apple, J.D. Power has awarded the tech giant with the proverbial cherry on top: its latest smartphone customer satisfaction survey puts the iPhone maker ahead of Samsung, HTC, BlackBerry and LG on every major U.S. carrier. According to J.D. Power, customers of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile are most satisfied with their iOS devices, with Samsung taking second place. It wasn’t exactly a blowout for Apple though – on a 1,000 point scale for each carrier, Apple only beat Samsung by double digits for Sprint customers. The score was within a single point for Verizon. The key findings from the study show that customers are still more interesting in features than anything else when

It argued that Comcast could use its newfound power to charge a toll for content that might compete with its own video offerings — a toll like the one that Netflix already found itself paying to improve the quality of streaming for Comcast customers. Comcast wasn't too happy about that, of course, firing back that it was Netflix's decision to cut out the middleman and work directly with Comcast to speed things up, and that the fee is standard practice for companies that offer "transit service" to quickly move data between networks. But in a new blog post, Netflix now claims that Comcast isn't truly offering "transit service." It accuses Comcast of extorting content companies and its own customers by charging twice for the same content. "Comcast is double dipping by getting both... to pay for access to each other."