Twitter said Thursday it was appealing a court ruling ordering it to turn over data on one of its users involved in the Occupy Wall Street protest movement.

In a case watched closely as a test of online freedom of speech, Twitter's attorney Benjamin Lee said in a tweet: "We're appealing the Harris decision. It doesn't strike the right balance between the rights of users and the interests of law enforcement."

Microsoft posted its first ever loss on Thursday, shedding $492 million in the fourth quarter due to a massive $6.2 billion write-down to reflect the slump in value of its online operations.

Microsoft still posted an annual profit of $16.98 billion and said the results reflected "solid revenue growth and rigorous cost discipline."

YouTube on Wednesday began letting people blur faces in videos they upload to the website, which has become a major platform for sharing clips of dramatic news events.

"Today we're launching face blurring -- a new tool that allows you to obscure faces within videos with the click of a button," said Amanda Conway, policy associate at the Google-owned video-sharing service.

Sales of ebooks more than doubled in 2011 to bring in some $2.07 billion for the U.S. publishing industry, a survey showed Wednesday.

The data from the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group said ebooks grew from $869 million in 2010. Last year, ebooks accounted for some six percent of overall publishing revenues.

Mexico's interior minister suggested Wednesday that a mobile software app could help crack down on the country's crippling drug-related crime.

Speaking at a conference hosted by search giant Google in California, Alejandro Poire said the new government was determined to get a grip on the violence wracking Mexico, and technology could help.

A New Zealand judge has stepped down from overseeing the extradition case of Mega upload founder Kim Dotcom after jokingly referring to the United States as "the enemy."

The comment by Auckland District Court Judge David Harvey raised questions about his impartiality. He was discussing Internet copyright at a conference last week when he told an audience, "We have met the enemy, and he is U.S."

Google chief Eric Schmidt declared war on international criminals Tuesday, vowing to harness technology to battle "illicit networks" around the world.

At a two-day summit including Interpol, government ministers and victims of forced labor and child slavery, Schmidt said the Internet can help fight traffickers of drugs, sex workers and organs.

The chief of U.S. computer maker Dell on Tuesday announced the launch of a $60 million fund focused on investing in technology for storing the massive amounts of data being collected by businesses.

"We really believe in this explosion of data driven a lot by smartphones and tablets," Michael Dell, founder of the Texas-based company that bears his name, said at a Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado.

EBay-owned online financial transactions titan PayPal on Tuesday announced that it has bought a San Francisco startup focused on using smartphone cameras to take credit card payments.

PayPal has worked with Card.io to fold its technology into its own mobile application and decided to buy the company, according to PayPal vice president of global product Hill Ferguson.

Forget videos of cute kittens or good deals on iPads. For the past few months, Google has been quietly turning its search capabilities to something far more challenging: criminals.

Drug cartels, money launderers and human traffickers run their sophisticated operations online — and Google Ideas, Google Inc.'s think tank, is working with the Council on Foreign Relations and other organizations to look for ways to use technology to disrupt international crime.