SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Michael Dell likely couldn’t have known when he proposed taking his company private last year that he would trigger a three-way contest between two private equity giants and one of Wall Street’s most aggressive activist investors. The outcome of that battle now hinges on the billionaire Texan.

Few predicted a bidding war for a company struggling to re-model itself as its core market declines – let alone one that pushed its value above $24 billion. Behind the scenes, a less-public tug-of-war is emerging, centered on the 47-year-old founder himself.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Technology giants Apple, Google and Amazon are furiously maneuvering for position in the online music business and looking at ways to make streaming profitable, despite the fact that pioneer Pandora has never made a profit.

It has been more than a decade since the iPod heralded the revival of Apple and presaged the smartphone revolution, even as music-sharing site Napster was showing the disruptive power of the Internet in the music business.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Technology giants Apple, Google and Amazon are furiously maneuvering for position in the online music business and looking at ways to make streaming profitable, despite the fact that pioneer Pandora has never made a profit.

It has been more than a decade since the iPod heralded the revival of Apple and presaged the smartphone revolution, even as music-sharing site Napster was showing the disruptive power of the Internet in the music business.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 21 (Reuters) – Apple Inc now
runs its largest U.S. data center entirely on renewable energy,
with a majority of the power generated on-site from solar panels
and fuel cells, the company’s chief financial officer, Peter
Oppenheimer, said on Thursday.

The data center in Maiden, North Carolina, which supports
Internet storage and Apple’s service-hosting iCloud product,
produces 167 million kilowatts — the power equivalent of 17,600
homes for one year — from a 100-acre solar farm and fuel cell
installations provided by Silicon Valley startup Bloom Energy.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co Chairman Ray Lane and several other directors narrowly kept their seats on the board as shareholders conveyed their displeasure over the botched $11 billion acquisition of British software firm Autonomy Plc.

Lane, a managing partner at high-powered Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, fellow venture capitalist Marc Andressen and other board members have come under fire from shareholders for one of the company’s costliest acquisition mistakes in years.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co’s shareholders re-elected the company’s board on Wednesday, but Chairman Ray Lane and three others only narrowly kept their seats after criticism about their roles in the botched $11 billion acquisition of Autonomy Plc.

The election results, announced at HP’s annual meeting in Mountain View, signaled rising displeasure with a board that investors blamed for failing to conduct proper due diligence before buying Autonomy. HP later accused its former executives of perpetrating accounting fraud, which they have denied.