TechBiz

By Therese Poletti

Sweeping out the problems of prior regimes and making a fresh start appears to be the motto of Yahoo (YHOO) and its current interim chief, Ross Levinsohn, as the company has settled an array of its over-hanging problems in the last month.

It ended a proxy battle with hedge-fund investor Daniel Loeb. It resolved the big question on the value of its shares in China's still-private Alibaba with a deal in May to sell up to half of its 40% stake and return proceeds to shareholders. And last week, it announced a pact with Facebook (FB) after it had sued the social network for patent infringement.

One by one, Yahoo is eliminating the clouds that have hovered over the company for months.

By Richard Saintvilus

Ever since social media giant Facebook (FB) lost General Motors (GM) as an advertising client prior to its initial public offering, the social media company has been working extremely hard to prove that not only is its site an effective advertising platform, but that it can produce a superior return to traditional outlets such as print media and television.

GM, which has a significant annual advertising budget of approximately $3 billion, until recently has been advertising on Facebook for four years -- spending close to $40 million for combined advertising as well as creative and management service fees.

By Debra Borchardt

Every cloud has its silver lining. That has certainly been the case with cloud-computing companies going public. New cloud stocks have been rising high within the IPO market.

The latest to billow was ServiceNow (NOW), which priced its shares at $18 on June 28. The initial range had been $15-$17 a share, and the stock is already trading at more than $26 a share.

It's this kind of performance that has pushed many companies to promote themselves as cloud-based service companies even if they aren't. They hope that investors won't do their homework and not look beyond the claim of cloud, resulting in a successful offering.

Now that the confetti's all swept up, reviews are trickling in for Google's (GOOG) first tablet, the hotly anticipated Nexus 7. At an asking price of $199 for the 8 GB model ($249 for 16 GB), users will get a powerful 7-inch tablet that ships with the newest version of Android, 4.1 Jelly Bean; a fast 1.3GHz quad-core processor; a camera and a polished look and feel that's been missing from all other Android tablets that came before the Kindle Fire. 

Although Google hasn't set a release date, the tablet will reportedly ship in the U.S. in mid-July. Does it offer more bang for your buck than Amazon's (AMZN) best-selling gadget?

By Investopedia staff

In the days of dot-com mania, investors could throw money into an IPO and be almost guaranteed killer returns. Numerous companies, including names like VA Linux and theglobe.com, experienced huge first-day gains but ended up disappointing investors in the long term. People who had the foresight to get in, and out, on some of these companies made investing look way too easy.

However, no investment is a sure thing.