YouTube is beefing up its roster of movies for "rent" online in the United States to woo viewers away from television and take on booming Internet service Netflix.

"You're spending just 15 minutes a day on YouTube, and spending five hours a day watching TV," YouTube head Salar Kamangar said Monday in a post at the Google-owned video-sharing website.

Internet giant Google could launch an online music service as early as Tuesday to rival Amazon's "cloud" service, which allows users to store digital music online, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said on Monday that Google, like Amazon, has yet to secure licenses from the major record companies, and would limit users to a "streaming mode" to prevent piracy.

U.S. software giant Microsoft is near to clinching a deal to buy Internet telephony pioneer Skype for $7-8 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The newspaper cited unnamed people familiar with the matter as saying the deal could close as soon as Tuesday or fall apart completely.

Facebook is driving an increasing amount of traffic to news sites but Google remains the top referring service, according to a study published on Monday.

The study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at the behaviour of news consumers online during the first nine months of 2010 using audience statistics from the Nielsen Co.

Chief Executive Howard Stringer apologized for "inconvenience and concern" caused by the security breach that compromised personal data from more than 100 million online gaming accounts as the company’s shares dived.

The electronics giant firm was 2.80 percent down by noon in Tokyo trade Friday, after earlier plunging 4.1 percent as Japanese markets reopened following the Golden Week holiday.

The Internet has become a major tool in European organized crime, which uses it for drugs and human trafficking and money laundering as well as cyber crime, Europol's top official said Wednesday.

There has been a marked increase over the last two years in criminal groups turning to the Web to commit crimes regarded as "more traditional" rather than purely computer-based crime, Europol director Rob Wainwright said.

Amazon unveiled a membership-only private sales site on Tuesday called Myhabit.com offering designer and boutique brands.

The Seattle, Washington-based online retail giant said Myhabit.com will offer up to 60 percent off list prices on selected fashion products, such as designer clothing through daily events.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer announced Tuesday that the U.S. software giant's Bing search engine and maps would be the default service on BlackBerry devices.

Ballmer made the announcement during a surprise appearance at the three-day BlackBerry World developers conference being held by BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) in Orlando, Florida.

Apple on Tuesday announced that it beefed up its iMac all-in-one desktop computers with powerful new-generation Intel chips and high definition cameras.

The latest iMac computers were touted as 70 percent faster than their predecessors with a threefold improvement in graphics.

Computer security experts warned on Monday that online scammers have already started to exploit the death of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to spread malware.

"Watch out for the links you're likely to come across in email or on social networking sites offering you additional coverage of this newsworthy event," Paul Ducklin of computer security firm Sophos said in a blog post.