San Francisco  - Google on Tuesday apologized for an outage that struck possibly millions of users of its email system, Gmail, earlier in the day.

"The Gmail outage that affected many consumers and Google Apps users worldwide is now over. Users should find that they're able to access their email now without any further problems," said Acacio Cruz, Gmail site reliability manager, in a blog posting.

San Francisco  - Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday signed a 130-billion-dollar budget including tax increases and spending cuts into law, ending a four-month crisis in California.

The largest and richest state in the US was in a deadlock, which saw it unable to pay its bills. Lawmakers finally passed the bill Thursday.

San Francisco  - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued 20,000 layoff notices and halted work on the state's remaining 276 public projects as intransigent Republican lawmakers continued to stonewall efforts to pass a budget.

The budget impasse prompted legislative leader to hold parliamentarians in their chambers Tuesday until they reached an agreement.

San Francisco  - Microsoft has long been accused of copying the computer innovations of its smaller competitor Apple. Now it is also copying parts of Apple's retail model.

The software giant plans to start its own chain of retail stores highlighting its products, following the success of Apple's 251 stores in engaging customers and boosting Apple's profile.

The Microsoft announcement on Friday did not include details of the retail rollout but it will not be the company's first attempt to open up a retail shop. The company opened a Microsoft store in Sony's Metreon centre in San Francisco in 1999, in which it showcased technology from Microsoft and its partners, but the store closed in 2002.

San Francisco  - Computer chip-maker Intel announced plans to invest 7 billion dollars over the next two years to expand and transform three US manufacturing plants to produce the world's first 32-nanometer transistors.

The move to build the plants in Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon could see Intel gain a priceless advantage over smaller rivals like Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) which don't have the financial resources to invest in new fabrication facilities.

San Francisco  - Computer chip-maker Intel announced plans to invest 7 billion dollars over the next two years to expand and transform three US manufacturing plants to produce the smaller 32- nanometer transistors.

The move to invest in the plants in Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon could see Intel gain a priceless advantage over smaller rivals like Advanced Micro Devices which don't have the financial resources to invest in new fabrication facilities.