German sports gear maker Adidas said Monday it is encouraging workers in factories of some of its Asian suppliers to anonymously share possible grievances directly with the company via text message.

The new hotline service will help bridge the communication gap between management and workers, enabling employees to "simply send an SMS when they feel their rights are breached," Adidas AG said.

EU anti-trust officials said Monday that Google-owned Motorola was abusing its leading position in Germany's mobile phones market by filing a patent injunction against Apple over certain core smartphone functions.

A statement said that the European Union had reached a "preliminary view" on a competition investigation opened in April 2012 and decided that Motorola Mobility's action "amounts to an abuse of a dominant position prohibited by EU anti-trust rules."

YouTube is proving to be a powerful launch pad for a new generation of Internet-savvy music stars from Psy to Macklemore and beyond.

The Google-owned video-sharing website has catapulted Psy, Macklemore, Justin Bieber and others onto global stages where they can cash in on digital downloads of songs; packed concerts; online ads, or even sponsored music videos.

Barnes & Noble is teaming up with Google to vastly increase the number of apps available on its Nook HD tablets.

The bookstore chain says it will add Google's Play app store to its 7-inch (177.8-millimeter) Nook HD and 9-inch HD+ products in the U.S. and U.K. via a software update Friday. The move expands the number of apps available from the roughly 10,000 the Nook already offered in its own store — such as Angry Birds and Netflix — to 700,000-plus apps and games offered on Google Play. And it comes after a weak holiday sales season for the Nook, which is struggling to gain market share in the rapidly expanding tablet market.

An Algerian sought in connection with the "SpyEye" computer virus designed to steal financial and personal information was extradited by Thailand to the United States to face charges, officials said Friday.

The U.S. Justice Department said Hamza Bendelladj, known by his alias "Bx1," would face charges in federal court in Atlanta, Georgia, for his role in developing, marketing and distributing the malware.

Microsoft's Hotmail, the free webmail service used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, was phased out Friday, as the U.S. tech giant completed a rebranding to Outlook.com.

"We're excited to announce that we've completed upgrading all Hotmail customers to Outlook.com," Microsoft's Dick Craddock said in a blog post late Thursday.

Industry tracker comScore on Friday reported that Apple gained ground in the U.S. smartphone market, nibbling into the lead held by handsets powered by Google's Android software.

Apple's share of the U.S. smartphone market climbed nearly three percent to 39 percent in the first three months of this year, making the California company the most popular handset maker in the country, according to comScore.

Jonathan Ive is taking his new job as head of iOS design at Apple very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it might cause a delay for the latest version of the operating system powering iPhones, iOS 7.

Ive took over the position of head of iOS design from Scott Forstall 6 months ago, and he's already started to change lot of what Forstall created. Engineers are rushing to finish iOS 7 by June to show it off at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, Bloomberg reported.

Internet giant Google has recognized the Palestinians' upgraded U.N. status, placing the name "Palestine" on its search engine instead of "Palestinian Territories," the U.S. company said on Friday, raising the ire of Israel.

The domain name www.google.ps, Google's search engine for the territories, now brings up a homepage with "Palestine" written underneath the Google logo.

The head of Dailymotion, the video-sharing site at the center of an uproar after the French state blocked its sale to Yahoo!, said in an interview published Friday there was still a lot of interest abroad for his firm.

Industrial Renewal Minister Arnaud Montebourg admitted this week to having derailed plans by the U.S. web giant to buy a majority stake in Dailymotion, dealing a blow to attempts by France to appear more business-friendly.