SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc(GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) unveiled its first tablet PC on Wednesday, as the Internet company looks to replicate its smartphone success in a tablet market where it faces stiff competition from Apple Inc(AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research), Microsoft(MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Amazon(AMZN.O: Quote, Profile, Research).

The “Nexus 7″ tablet, built and co-branded in partnership with hardware maker Asus (2357.TW: Quote, Profile, Research), will be priced starting at $199. Google unveiled the tablet at its annual developer conference in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc CEO Larry Page, who plans to skip several high-profile events in coming weeks after losing his voice, told employees there was “nothing seriously wrong with me,” according to a source who had seen an internal staff memo.

Page sat out his company’s annual shareholders’ meeting on Thursday. The 39-year-old Google co-founder is resting his voice because of an unspecified condition, and he will miss Google’s annual developer conference next week as well as its quarterly results announcement next month, executives said on Thursday without elaborating.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc has begun showing ads on Zynga Inc’s website, the first time the company has distributed ads beyond the borders of its own website and raising the possibility that Facebook could eventually launch an online advertising network.

“People may now see ads and sponsored stories from Facebook on Zynga.com,” said Facebook spokesperson Tucker Bounds. He said that Facebook does not share information about people or advertisers with Zynga, and that Facebook’s advertisers do not have any new “targeting criteria.”

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc Chief Executive Larry Page sat out his company’s annual shareholders’ meeting on Thursday due to an unspecified condition affecting his voice that will sideline him from speaking engagements for several weeks.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told shareholders at the company’s Mountain View headquarters that Page, who replaced Schmidt as CEO in April 2011, had “lost his voice” and would not be able to do any public speaking engagements for the time being.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc offered a rare peek on Tuesday at one facet of the elaborate system it uses to police its 900 million-user social network, as it attempts to keep it free of content it deems offensive, illegal or just plain inappropriate.

The company said it employs “hundreds” of staffers in several offices around the world to handle the millions of user reports it receives every week about everything from spam to threats of violence.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc and Apple Inc are attracting renewed scrutiny of their practices due to privacy concerns – this time for flying “military-grade spy planes” over major U.S. cities as they race to shore up their rival 3D mapping services.

Staffers for Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, met with Google officials on Monday to discuss privacy issues related to the camera-equipped planes. They plan to meet with Apple on Friday.

BOSTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Oracle Corp (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) reported stronger-than-expected quarterly profit on Monday, releasing the results three days ahead of schedule after news of the pending departure of a senior sales executive fueled concerns that business was stagnating.

While the departure of senior sales personnel, particularly at the end of a quarter can often signal weaker sales, the exit of executive in question, Keith Block, appeared linked to criticisms of his boss Oracle President Mark Hurd and the company’s Sun Microsystems division in internal communications that later became public.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 18 (Reuters) – Facebook Inc said
Monday it was buying Face.com, the company that now provides
facial-recognition technology used by the world’s largest social
network to help users identify and tag photos.

The deal bolsters one of Facebook’s most popular features –
the sharing and handling of photos — but the use of the
startup’s technology has spurred concerns about user privacy.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Yahoo Inc has hired former Google director and media veteran Michael Barrett to help lead its efforts to reemerge as an entertainment and information destination that wins advertising revenue.

Barrett, who will take the title of Chief Revenue Officer, is one of new interim CEO Ross Levinsohn’s first key appointments, underscoring signs that Yahoo — a company that has suffered from strategy flip-flops under successive CEOs — is now thinking of itself as more of a media company than a technology company.

NEW YORK, June 14 (Reuters) – YouTube’s boss said that cable
television channels with small audiences will in the future
migrate to the Web and become available on a stand-alone basis,
potentially making a home for themselves on the No.1 video
website.

The cable channels could provide more professionally
produced content for YouTube as it weighs selling subscriptions
for consumers to access some of its video offerings.