It was being reported last week that Micron Technology issued a bid of $1.5 billion to take over Elpida Memory, which had fallen on tough times after a prolonged slump in the DRAM market, and it now appears as though Micron is the frontrunner to acquire the bankrupt memory maker. Toshiba and Globalfoundries were two other names that had been thrown around as potential suitors, but either they didn't bid, or they were outbid by Micron.

Advanced Micro Devices isn't afraid to spend big bucks acquiring companies seemingly out of the blue, such as it did when it acquired ATI for $5.4 billion in 2006. Fast forward to today and AMD is getting ready to spend over a quarter of a billion dollars scooping up SeaMicro, a startup that's been intensely focused on low-power, high-bandwidth microserver solutions.

Nearly six years have gone by since AMD scooped up ATI for $5.4 billion, and when it was first announced, analysts wondered if the chip maker was making the right move. AMD's multi-billion dollar gamble paid off, and until Kepler arrives, the Sunnyvale chip makers owns the fastest single-GPU graphics card in the world (Radeon HD 7970). But what if AMD had acquired Nvidia instead?

John M. Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog's Privacy Project, inked a letter to Mr. Joaquin Almunia, vice president of the European Commission, voicing his organization's concerns over "Google's ongoing anti-competitive behavior," which includes the search giant's proposed $12.5 billion merger with Motorola Mobility. The nearly 3-page letter criticizes Google's business behavior in detail with a particular focus on why Consumer Watchdog feels the merger with Motorola should be blocked.