principal analyst

The race to provide ultrafast broadband is on. In May, Cleveland will become a test bed for a service, spearheaded by Case Western Reserve University, that lets residents of more than 100 homes download data at about 1 gigabit per second. In February, Google said it plans an ultra-high-speed broadband network covering as many as 500,000 users. "The purpose of this project is to experiment and learn," Google said in a blog introducing the idea. "Network providers are making real progress to expand and improve high-speed Internet access, but there's still more to be done." The U.S.

The race to provide ultrafast broadband is on.

Taking one more step into the broadcasting world, Google is planning a web-based TV service in partnership with tech giants like Intel, Logitech and Sony. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the Google TV effort is in its preliminary stages.

The industry behemoths are reportedly collaborating on software that will help users navigate web-based video programming on traditional television sets. The software would offer a platform on which other developers could launch programs, the Journal reported. The technology could show up in future TVs, Blu-ray players or set-top boxes.

Intel is pushing its Xeon Processor 5600 series as the most secure data-center processor on the market. The company launched the server and workstation chips on its 32nm logic technology, which relies on second-generation high-k metal gate transistors to boost speed and lower energy consumption.

Dell is accusing five Japanese and Taiwanese companies of price-fixing on LCD panels. The computer maker filed suit Friday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against Sharp, Hitachi, Toshiba, Seiko Epson, and HannStar.

In its 61-page complaint, Dell said it filed suit "on behalf of itself and its affiliates to recover for antitrust and other harms arising from billions of dollars of purchases at artificially inflated prices, over several years, of thin-film transistor liquid-crystal display panels, or products containing TFT-LCD panels."

In a move to broaden its reach across the Internet, Twitter on Monday announced a new feature that lets users send and receive 140-character messages while surfing the web. Dubbed @anywhere, Twitter's latest service gives sites like Amazon.com, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC, The New York Times, Yahoo and YouTube the ability to stream the millions of daily tweets Twitter users send every day.

In an international Internet drama, Google seems closer to ending operations in China after threatening two months ago to pull out of the market. Google's Chinese-language search engine is the only major foreign competitor in the communist nation.

According to The Wall Street Journal, a person familiar with the situation said Google is likely to take action within weeks. Meanwhile, Chinese government officials told state news outlets that Google's Chinese site is likely to close, and that if Google exits, those news outlets are required to publish only government accounts.

Intel this week offered a preview of platforms using its Core i7 Extreme Edition processor. Although the company is aiming the processor heavily at the gaming market, analysts said there are also clear business applications for the processor.

Code-named Gulftown, the i7-980X Extreme Edition processor is the industry's first 32nm, six-core processor with 12 computing threads. Intel introduced the i7 family last September with its exclusive Turbo Boost technology and Hyper-Threading Technology.

The search-engine wars are alive and well -- and Bing is the beneficiary again. Microsoft's so-called decision engine grabbed 11.5 percent of the U.S. search market in February, according to comScore.

Although that's only a slight increase over January, when Bing boasted 11.3 percent of the search market, it's an incremental improvement Microsoft is glad to see for its less-than-a-year-old engine.

No watered-down Internet. No sacrifices. That's the promise Hewlett-Packard Vice President and CTO Phil McKinney offered consumers in a blog post about the PC giant's upcoming tablet computer. HP's iPad competitor, he promised, will offer a full web browsing experience in the palm of your hand.