Google's Changes: Morning Tech Bytes

Google was rising in pre-market trading Thursday after changing its search formula to protect consumers.
By Olivia Oran ,

NEW YORK (

TheStreet

) --

Google

(GOOG) - Get Report

announced Wednesday it was changing its search algorithm to ensure that bad merchants were not displayed prominently in search results.

The change comes after a recent

New York Times

article highlighted a merchant who was purposely antagonizing customers so they would write negative online reviews, which ended up boosting his ranking in Google search results.

Shares of Google rose 0.9% in pre-market trading Thursday to $569.44.

Verizon

(VZ) - Get Report

said it would launch its

4G wireless broadband network

on Sunday in 38 cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle.

Shares of Verizon were up 0.3% in pre-market trading to $32.45.

Amazon

(AMZN) - Get Report

kicked WikiLeaks off its computer servers after the site released thousands of controversial government documents over the weekend. The WikiLeaks site is now being hosted by servers in Europe.

Shares of Amazon rose 0.1% in pre-market trading to $176.73.

Online video site

Hulu

would consider taking on new investors for global expansion, the company told

The Wall Street Journal

in an interview Wednesday. Hulu's current owners include

Disney

(DIS) - Get Report

, NBC Universal and

News Corp

(NWSA) - Get Report

. The company is weighing an IPO as well, according to reports.

Popular daily deals site

Groupon

announced Wednesday that it had acquired three websites in Asia which serve Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and Taiwan. Groupon is currently in

M&A discussions with Google

.

--Written by Olivia Oran in New York.

>To follow the writer on Twitter, go to

http://twitter.com/Ozoran

.

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