The breakdown, drawn from Nielsen's rating service, typically provides viewers' ages, gender, marital status and other personal data that help advertisers choose the audience most likely to be interested in their product or service.

New York-based Nielsen has been selling demographic data to television stations and advertisers for years.

Google's access to the information is significant because it gives the Mountain View-based company more tools to draw upon as it tries to target television ads as effectively as it has done on the Internet.

Because it processes more than 1 billion search requests per day, Google hasn't needed as much outside help to learn about the interests of its Internet users.

"This is another indication that Google is very serious about selling more ads in the mainstream media," said Brad Adgate, director of research for Horizon Media, which helps advertisers buy television ads.

Since May, Google has been delivering television ads for about 14 million subscribers to EchoStar Communication Corp.'s Dish network and Astound Broadband cable service.

The set-top boxes used by EchoStar and Astound enabled Google to track when commercials were watched and for how long. By drawing on Nielsen's data, Google will now have information on what kinds of viewers are watching the commercial.

"This was a missing piece of puzzle for us," said Keval Desai, Google's director of product management for TV ads.

Desai said Google is "thrilled" with its progress so far in TV advertising but declined to provide any financial specifics.

Even as it expands its ad platform into TV, radio and print, Google continues to make most of its money from text-based ad links posted next to search results and other online content.

Google's formula has been so profitable that it now has a market value of about $210 billion, second only to Microsoft Corp. in the high-tech industry.

The Google alliance appeals to Nielsen because the rating firm is trying to develop new measurement techniques and extend its reach into more digital media, such as iPods and mobile phones.

"The relationship with Google...is a prime example of the ways Nielsen is embracing new technologies, platforms and relationships worldwide to serve clients more completely," Nielsen Chairman David Calhoun said in a statement.

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. traded lower Friday, playing off a wider-than-expected third-quarter loss tied in part to a $120 million charge taken for its acquisition of ATI Technologies.

The shares were off more than 5% at their worst levels in morning action, down lately by 74 cents to $13.81.

Analysts said the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker AMD  got a boost from strong consumer demand for personal computers, particularly notebooks.

But they also said AMD continues to face stiff competition from archrival Intel Corp. in the server market, and it's still struggling to keep costs under control.

"While we believe these results represent a nice recovery quarter and reaffirm the sustained strength in overall PC demand trends, we believe that the company still has a challenging road ahead both on [the] competitive technology front as well as a near-term return to profitability," analysts at Cowen & Co. said in a research note Friday.

Cowen's analysts also pointed out that AMD appears to have lost some market share to Intel in servers but that "some of these share losses could be stemmed in [the fourth quarter] as AMD ramps production of its quad core platform."

Cowen maintained a neutral rating on AMD's shares.

Meanwhile, analyst Robert Burleson of ThinkEquity Partners offered a more upbeat analysis, noting AMD's "very robust sequential notebook unit growth" and "a rebound in graphics, which we believe will accelerate" in the fourth quarter.

ThinkEquity Partners reiterated its buy rating on AMD.

The company said it lost $396 million on revenue of $1.63 billion in the three months ended Sept. 29. This compares to a profit of $136 million on revenue of $1.33 billion in year-earlier third quarter.

The company reported a loss per share of 71 cents, compared to a profit of 27 cents a share in the same quarter last year. But the company said the ATI-related charges totaled 22 cents a share. AMD acquired ATI, one of the world's top makers of computer graphic cards, last year.

Analysts had expected AMD to post a loss of 62 cents per share on revenue of $1.52 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

As Mozilla continues to develop Mozilla2, the second version of the platform on which Firefox is built, it will add mobile devices as a category. That means developers of Mozilla2, which is expected to be complete in early 2009, will keep mobile phones in mind as they build the new platform, Schroepfer wrote.

He didn't get more specific on a release date for the mobile browser other than to say "not before 2008." Schroepfer also said Mozilla hadn't yet decided which mobile phones the browser would work on.

Depending on compatibility, Mozilla could face competition from companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Apple that include their own browsers in phones running their operating systems, as well as from third parties such as Opera Software ASA that have been fine-tuning their mobile browsers for years now.

The announcement comes after the release earlier this year of a new version of Minimo, a Mozilla-based mobile browser for Windows Mobile devices. A few months prior to the release, the lead developer of Minimo said he wouldn't be spending much time on the project in the future. On Tuesday, Schroepfer said that there are no plans to further develop Minimo.

Mozilla also offers Joey, a project in development that lets users clip and save text, photos, videos and other content while using a PC and then access that content through a browser on a cell phone.

Mozilla is also involved with a group of companies including Arm Ltd. and MontaVista Software Inc. that is developing an open-source Linux-based platform for devices that are bigger than a cell phone but smaller than a laptop. Mozilla is developing a browser for the platform and has already built one for a similar device, the N800, from Nokia Corp.

The new Mozilla hires who will contribute to the mobile Firefox initiative are Christian Sejersen, who recently worked for Openwave Systems Inc., and Brad Lassey, who worked for France Telecom R&D, which has been very active in mobile Linux initiatives.

The XEL-1 will accept up to a 1080p video image, although the 11-inch screen has a resolution of just 960 pixels by 540 pixels.

The launch of the XEL-1, coming one day before the start of the Ceatec 2007 exhibition, gives Sony a head start on its competitors, many of whom are also working on OLED technology for televisions. After several years of being upstaged by competitors pushing into new technology areas, such as MP3 players and LCD televisions, the OLED launch puts Sony firmly ahead in the race to thinner flat-screen televisions.

OLEDs offer other advantages over LCD and PDP technology, including wider viewing angles, faster response time, and better contrast and colors. However, the technology is difficult to manufacture and the OLED material degrades over time.

Sony said the XEL-1 has a viewing life of 30,000 hours, which allows a user to watch eight hours of television each day for 10 years. The television goes on sale in Japan on Dec. 1, and will cost US$1,740.50. Currently, there are no plans to sell the television outside Japan, as Sony plans to manufacture just 2,000 sets each month.

The XEL-1 has a thin, widescreen display mounted on a metal arm attached to a base. The base contains all of the electronics required for the television, and has an HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) port, a built-in satellite tuner, as well as a USB port and an Ethernet connection.

The television, which uses the same XMB user interface found in the company's Bravia line of LCD televisions and PlayStation 3, measures 287 mm by 253 mm by 140 mm, and weighs 2 kilograms.

Apple warned earlier this week that the iPhone update -- which adds access to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store and fixes some security flaws -- could permanently disable phones running programs that untether phones from its exclusive partner's network.

Several gadget enthusiast Web sites, including Gizmodo and Engadget, as well as online postings from hacker communities reported that, depending on which unlocking program was used, certain modified phones no longer worked after they installed Thursday's software update. In some cases, the phones worked, but only with the original SIM card that ties the phone to AT&T.

Some sites also reported uncondoned third-party applications on the iPhones became disabled after the update.

Some hackers had characterized Apple's warning as "a scare tactic." Despite Apple's history of playing cat-and-mouse games with hackers in the past, company officials insisted they were "not proactively" trying to make hacked iPhones useless.

It was unclear how many iPhone owners had unlocked their phones, but the programs -- including several that can be downloaded for free -- appeared to be particularly popular with European consumers. Apple isn't selling the iPhone or initiating the service in Europe until November, so the unlocking software allowed Europeans who bought iPhones in the United States to use the $399 devices.

Installing Apple's latest iPhone update is optional.

Microsoft Corp. is in talks about a possible investment in Facebook Inc. that could value the social networking site at $10 billion or more, according to reports.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft has joined Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc. in expressing interest in Facebook.

Microsoft could take up to a 5 percent stake in the Palo Alto-based company, the Journal reported, which could mean about $300 million to $500 million.

The Journal also reported that Microsoft and Facebook could expand an agreement -- set to expire in 2011 -- in which Microsoft serves display ads to Facebook.

Facebook has raised about $40.7 million so far, and earlier this month announced a new $10 million fund to promote development of new applications for its online social network site.

Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel Brad Smith called the court ruling disappointing but added that the software giant is "committed to complying with every aspect" of the decision.

The Luxembourg-based court wrote that it agreed with EU regulators who said Microsoft has "abused its dominant position" in the global software marketplace by stifling competition and undercutting innovation efforts by rivals, thus keeping prices excessively high.

Although Smith said the Redmond, Wash., company has not decided whether to appeal the court decision, he appeared far more resigned and conciliatory toward European regulators than in the past when Microsoft accused them of trying to curb innovation by forcing the company to give up its technology secrets.

Smith said at a news conference in Brussels, Belgium, which was carried on Microsoft's Web site, that the decision "very clearly gives the commission quite broad power and quite broad discretion." Although the EU commission's demands cannot be enforced outside Europe, Smith said the implications of the case will affect "our industry and every other industry in the world."