In the boldest move yet by new CEO Marissa Mayer, Yahoo will buy the blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion. The move is a bet that Tumblr's large community of users is a source of potential profits. While Tumblr is a fast-growing startup, it has not generated significant revenue.

This week in San Francisco, Google held its annual developers conference. It was there that the search industry giant laid out its vision for its future and ours.

The new Google Maps features tailor-made results based on users' habits and search histories. The features were made possible by the revisions Google made to its privacy policies last year, a change that removed most of the barriers between its various services.

Facebook is expected to pay out $20 million in a settlement over its "Sponsored Stories" advertising service, after placing user images in personalized ads. But the settlement doesn't stop the service, and a legal expert says Facebook's option to let users opt out creates more problems.

From privacy concerns to technology saturation, Google's new technology has had its fair share of criticism — and it's not even on sale yet. The company wants to change those negative perceptions of its wearable computer before it goes on sale to the public.

When Microsoft introduced Windows 8 last year, the software giant billed the new operating system as one of the most critical releases in its history. The system would bridge the gap between personal computers and the fast-growing mobile world of tablets and smartphones. But this week, the company sent signals that it might soon alter Windows 8 to address some early criticism.

After deadly disasters in clothing factories, labor activists are trying to persuade at least two more retailers to agree to improve working conditions in Bangladesh. Two retail giants have already signed onto a proposal that would mandate that fire and safety inspections be made public and require retailers to pay for needed factory repairs.

One way Western brands have responded to consumer concerns about unsafe working conditions in foreign countries is to create an elaborate system of independent auditors. Despite that, incidents still happen. Last week a building collapse in Bangladesh killed more than 400 people.

The Associated Press, NPR and the BBC have all had their Twitter accounts hijacked in recent weeks. Hacks of high-profile accounts have real-world consequences, and the security at Twitter is coming under increased scrutiny.

Apple released quarterly earnings on Tuesday that beat Wall Street's bearish expectations. Investors have done a pessimistic about-face on Apple since the company's stock price topped $700 in September. Apple's earnings were lower than a year ago for the first time in a decade. But Apple did offer investors some goodies — it increase its dividend and added $50 billion to a stock buyback program.

As Internet users injected themselves into the investigation of the Boston Marathon bombings, false rumors began to spread about possible suspects in the attack. One of those falsely accused in social media was a 22-year-old Brown University student who has been missing. The general manager of Reddit has now apologized to the student's family.

False leads and misidentifications whipped through social media following the bombings in Boston last week. Steve Henn talks to Audie Cornish about lessons learned and whether it's possible for citizen journalists and sites like Reddit to adopt standards of verification of information.

In the nearly 17 years since Atlanta's Olympic Park bombing, technology has transformed how large-scale investigations can work. Federal officials in Boston reportedly sifted through more than 10 terabytes of data — much of it images and video recorded at the marathon site. As NPR's Steve Henn reports, if you were to sit down to watch it all, it would take one person more than five years.

The high-tech glasses aren't yet available to the public. But a select group of test customers have received the gadgets after charming Google with their ideas for how to use them. NPR's Steve Henn takes a look at what Google Glass might offer users of the future.

Advertisers want to hear what you have to say, and many are about to roll out new kinds of ads you can actually have a conversation with. Marketers are hoping to leverage the power of voice and the kinds of technologies that power Apple's Siri to start selling us all sorts of things.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency that's traded online. It's been on a wild ride lately, soaring in value during the Cyprus banking crisis. And this week, the price plummeted after a Bitcoin trading exchange was hacked.

Social networks now hold tremendous power to regulate online speech. Their rules for allowable comments, art and video govern billions of posts worldwide each day. And while Twitter users enjoy a great deal of freedom, Facebook has relatively tight restrictions on what users can say and see.

Steve Henn looks at this week's technology news, including a possible Facebook phone announcement on Thursday and a nod to the multiple April Fools' Day jokes on the Internet.

Creators of a solar-powered aircraft hope to fly it day and night across the U.S. with no fuel, and eventually around the world. It's a quixotic — some might call it nutty — undertaking. But the creators hope the flight helps challenge assumptions about what solar technology can do.

The company's long-term position in the smartphone market is complicated because of its historical association with hardware. One analyst says that what really matters to consumers are the software and new experiences.