Jeremy Stoppleman, the CEO of Yelp, has walked away from an all-but-signed deal to be acquired by Google for more than half a billion dollars… Tweet This Post

It was so close I could taste it. Two weeks ago we were ready to publicly launch the CrunchPad. The device was stable enough for a demo. It went hours without crashing. We could even let people play with the device themselves… Tweet This Post

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took the stage today in San Francisco to extol how the company’s new slate of products — Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Exchange Server2010 — can help businesses save money and increase productivity as corporate IT budgets remain tight. The phrase Ballmer repeated throughout the talk was “with [...]

This is the third installment of our exclusive interview last week with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. In the first article we showed an overview and video footage of the main subject areas we covered: Big Opportunities, Operating Systems/Browsers, Mobile, Search and Developers… Tweet This Post

Is Twitter a billion-dollar company? It is now, according to its investors. People familiar with the company tell me it has raised around $50 million in a funding round that values the start-up, which has no real revenue to speak of, at about $1 billion… Tweet This Post

ast growing startup Twitter will soon be joining a select group of startups with private venture round valuations of $1 billion, we’ve heard from multiple sources. CEO Evan Williams disclosed the round to employees at a recent all hands meeting… Tweet This Post

AOL re-organized its upper management yesterday, booting COO Kim Patroll in the process. The timing is bizarre, considering newish CEO Tim Armstrong only named Kim to the post in July… Tweet This Post

It wouldn’t be so surprising (or newsworthy) if this was happening behind the scenes, but Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is now openly trying to recruit Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) search engineers. In a blog post, Matt Cutts, who is Google’s most prominent search blogger, says straight out, “if you’re an excellent Yahoo engineer with solid experience in [...]

A team of ex-Google employees won the top prize at the annual TechCrunch50 startup contest. Their company, Redbeacon, is sort of a modern-day Yellow Pages. It lets you search nearby service providers — plumbers, painters, personal trainers, etc. — and schedule appointments online… Tweet This Post

The 50 startup presentations are over, the judges votes are in, Michael and Jason chewed over the top contenders, and the winner of this year’s TechCrunch50 is RedBeacon. The startup aims to help consumers find local service providers such as plumbers, bakers, and contractors. As we described in our initial write-up:… Tweet This Post

—comScore: Gregory Dale was promoted to COO from CTO, responsible now for overseeing operating activities, including the company’s Product Management, Custom Analytics and Technology groups. Dale has been at the company in various roles for a decade, joining shortly after its founding in 1999…. Tweet This Post

n the ongoing game of Internet exec musical chairs, Greg Coleman (pictured here), who has been a top exec at both Yahoo and AOL, is poised to become president of the Huffington Post, as well as chief revenue officer, several sources said… Tweet This Post