San Francisco  - Shares of US memory chip maker SanDisk Corp soared more than 25 per cent early Friday after reports that it might be bought by Korean electronics giant Samsung.

SanDisk's shares have dropped more than 45 per cent since the beginning of the year as the industry reeled from a market glut that has pulled down average selling prices.

San Francisco  - US computer maker Dell is planning to sell its factories around the world to contract manufacturers within 18 months in a bid to save more than 3 billion dollars in costs, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Most of the factories would be sold to manufacturers in low-cost Asian countries, who would then produce computers for the Texas-based company, the report said.

San Francisco  - Three crew members were killed when an air tanker crashed shortly after taking off to fight a fire in the Sierra Nevada mountains, officials said Tuesday.

San Francisco  - Google released its first ever internet browser on Tuesday in a long-awaited move that increased pressure on Microsoft and laid a new foundation for a mass transition to web- based computing.

A test version of the new software, named Google Chrome, was made available for download Tuesday in more than 100 countries. The open- source browser had been in secret development for over two years at the search engine giant.

San Francisco  - Hoping to boost its internet power, Microsoft agreed to buy Greenfield Online Inc, the owner of European price comparison site Ciao GmbH, for about 486 million dollars, the company said in a statement Friday.

The price of 17.50 dollars a share represented a 1.4 per cent premium over the previous closing price, but was 32 per cent more than Greenfield was worth when it withdrew from a deal with Quadrangle Group LLC for 15.50 a share two weeks ago.

San Francisco  - Computer maker Dell posted lower quarterly profits Thursday, but said sales increased more than expected as the company tries to overtake Hewlett Packard as the world's biggest computer company.

The Round Rock, Texas-based company reported net income of 616 million dollars, or 31 cents per share, down 17 per cent from a profit of 746 million dollars, or 33 cents per share, that the company reported a year ago.

Sales in the quarter rose 11 per cent to 16.43 billion dollars from 14.77 billion dollars in the same period last year.