Technology, First Quarter | featured news

Facebook was once a darling of investors, then a turnoff. Now, a year after going public, the social network seems to have settled into a more stable relationship with Wall Street. But the company has still been taking pains to prove that it can make more money from its base of more than a billion users, especially from those using Facebook on mobile devices.

Yahoo said its profit rose 36% as the struggling Internet pioneer showed signs of continuing its slow but steady rebound under Mayer. But its shares fell after-hours on signs of decay in sales of display ads.

Hewlett-Packard Co.'s first-quarter earnings declined 16% as the technology giant continued to see weaker sales in its core personal computer business, though adjusted profits beat the company's expectations.

Microsoft said Thursday that an accounting adjustment to reflect a weak online ad business led to its first quarterly loss in its 26 years as a public company. The software company had warned that it was taking a $6.2 billion charge because its 2007 purchase of online ad service aQuantive hasn't yielded the returns envisioned by management. The non-cash adjustment is something companies do when the value of their assets decline. Microsoft Corp. paid $6.3 billion for aQuantive, only to see rival Google Inc. expand its share of the online ad market.

EBay's first-quarter net income grew 20 percent thanks to higher revenue from its PayPal business and brisk sales at its e-commerce websites. The results beat Wall Street's expectations and investors sent the company's stock higher in after-hours trading.