Now that the first weekend during which the iPad 2 was available is over, sales estimates are coming in left and right, and they tend to be quite positive. Piper Jaffray, for example, believes that perhaps 500,000 iPad 2s flew off shelves, and Wedbush Securities thinks a number in the neighborhood of 1 million is possible. To start with the less optimistic guess: Philip Elmer-DeWitt , who got a look at the Piper Jaffray report, wrote,

Biz Stone, who could already count himself the cofounder of Twitter, a former senior specialist at Google, and a former creative director at Xanga )among other things( can now add one more title to his resume. This morning, the Huffington Post Media Group and AOL named Stone "Strategic Adviser for Social Impact." The development's arguably a big win for the Huffington Post and AOL.

Four months ago, an internal Yahoo document leaked, letting the world know that Yahoo intended to "sunset" Delicious. Now, there's a sign Yahoo might have sold the organization for $5 million instead. To be perfectly clear: this has not been confirmed through official channels. There aren't even multiple anonymous sources behind the story. But The Next Web stated this afternoon,

Google's best lawyers may want to start packing their bags for Washington, D.C. Today, Senator Mike Lee called for the Senate Judiciary Committee's Antitrust Subcommittee to conduct an oversight hearing, and Lee identified Google as the sole target. That means Lee, a Republican from Utah, joined Herb Kohl, a Democrat from Wisconsin, in expressing concern about Google's dominance.

Sometimes, acquisitions don't work out. Sometimes, they do. And the DoubleClick acquisition is definitely an example of the second scenario, as Google shared some numbers this afternoon that paint a picture of remarkable growth. Today marks the third anniversary of Google's completion of the DoubleClick purchase, by the way, so keep that in mind when viewing the data. All the progress just occurred over 36 months )and 36 months in which the economy was not at all healthy,

The next time someone emails you a phone number, calling them may - depending on what sort of software and hardware accessories your computer's equipped with - become a little simpler. Google's integrated its click-to-call tech with Gmail in order to save people from pulling out their cell phones or turning to a landline. A heads up: anyone who would like to take advantage of this change will need to have Google's voice and video plugin installed,

Everyone knows that the iPad 2 is going to be big. Huge, even, depending on your definition of the word. And now an analyst's estimated that Apple will sell 600,000 of the devices this weekend, twice the number of first-generation iPads that sold in its first 24 hours of availability. Analyst Bran Marshall of Gleacher & Co. isn't alone in that belief. Bloomberg's Adam Satariano , who interviewed a few experts,

The 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan and caused a powerful tsunami has captured the Web's full attention. This morning, nine out of the ten trending topics on Twitter relate to the natural disasters, the top Google Trends look rather similar, and Google's released a new version of its Person Finder. We'll start our overview with a link to the Google Person Finder for the sake of anyone who has friends or family in Japan. As with earlier versions used in Chile,

Although the effect's reminiscent of what dental tools would do to a gigantic block of marble, Bing and Yahoo continue to chip away at Google's lead in the search market, according to new data from Experian Hitwise. The two companies' combined market share increased 3.79 percent on a month-over-month basis. That gave Bing and Yahoo a share of 28.48 percent in February, up from 27.44 percent in January. Google's market share, meanwhile, slipped from 67.95 percent to 66.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who knows of the Huffington Post acquisition )and particularly to anyone who's been watching headlines for the past week or so(, but AOL's laying off employees again. The total number of affected individuals is close to 1,000. Leena Rao , who actually works for AOL now that it's been bought TechCrunch, confirmed some rough figures earlier this morning. She wrote, "AOL will be letting go a little over 200 U.S. employees,

Score one for the whole "do no evil" directive at Google. Late yesterday, the search giant enabled click-to-call capabilities for emergency-related mobile search results, effectively acknowledging that it's as important for users to be able to contact poison control as reach an advertiser. To be fair, we hadn't heard anyone complain that Google's priorities weren't straight.

The beauty of an electric car is, of course, that it doesn't need gas. Yet a major downside is that gas stations are plentiful, while charging stations are rare. So a certain search giant intends to help EV owners by identifying charging stations on Google Maps. Cynthia Yeung, a member of Google's Strategic Partner Development Team, explained on the LatLong Blog , "As consumers embrace electric vehicles,

Monday, March 14th )and Tuesday, March 15th, depending on time zones and when everyone goes to bed( may come to mark a significant turning point in the browser wars. Microsoft's announced that it will make the final version of Internet Explorer 9 available for download on Monday, starting at 9 PM Redmond time. This is an important moment for the company. From a business perspective, Chrome has been gaining market share at a rapid pace,

Yesterday, LivingSocial announced that it had hired a high-ranking Yahoo sales exec )"Vice President of North American Field Sales"(. Now, although the timing has to be a coincidence, Yahoo's made two personnel changes that should help strengthen its sales organization. Wayne Powers, who is himself somewhat new to Yahoo, explained the adjustments in an internal memo obtained by Kara Swisher . Carol Bartz, Ross Levinsohn, Blake Irving, Elisa Steele,

At retail stores, unusual payments often bring things to a halt. Food stamps, tax exemptions, and even things like two-dollar bills can baffle cashiers )and computers( who aren't used to dealing with them. So to ease the burden Groupon puts on some businesses )and perhaps increase its influence(, it's possible we'll see cash registers with Groupon buttons introduced. We know, we know: this sounds a bit like one of Groupon's off-the-wall jokes.

Within Netflix, things look much the same today as yesterday. The company hasn't been hit by site outages, big resignations, or scandals of any sort. But Facebook's decision to let users rent The Dark Knight apparently spooked Netflix shareholders to the point they sent its stock tumbling 5.76 percent. That's of course a big, nasty drop. Then, making matters even worse for Netflix fans, there's the fact that the Nasdaq rose 0.73 percent today,

Over the years, Google's had to appear in French courts several times, and it now looks like a recent case didn't go so well. Google's been found guilty of breaching copyright laws, and unless something changes, the company faces a fine of almost $600,000. Granted, in objective financial terms, that wouldn't mean much to Google, which has a market cap of about $191 billion. The bigger problems would be the PR blow and the precedent this ruling would establish.

Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, is trying something new - and substantial - today. This morning, he launched Craigconnects, an initiative )and website( designed to encourage and trigger charitable acts all over the world. Craigconnects isn't intended to be any sort of side project or hobby for Newmark. In a video introduction, Newmark mentioned his ties to Craigslist, then stated, "Now I'm starting something even bigger, which I'm calling Craigconnects.

Yahoo's ad sales in the U.S. )along with the rest of the continent( may be in for a rough patch. LivingSocial, the group deals site that competes with Groupon, has managed to poach Mitch Spolan, whose title was "Vice President of North American Field Sales." There's an interesting bit of symmetry in this move, considering that Yahoo and Google have been rivals for so long and Google showed so much interest in Groupon )supposedly trying to acquire it for $6 billion(.

Depressed and suicidal people living in the UK and Ireland may now, thanks in part to Facebook, be more likely to receive some help. Facebook's partnered with a suicide prevention group called Samaritans so that users who see ominous content will know to report it to the organization. The screenshot below shows how this arrangement works. Facebook's approach isn't exactly the equivalent of a giant red button on every page, but at the same time,