In what appears to be a competitive move against emerging video sites, YouTube on Thursday announced an unexpected improvement to its video platform. The Google-owned company is increasing the upload limit from 10 minutes to 15 minutes.

Joshua Siegel, product manager for YouTube's Upload and Video Management department, said the company made the change because "without question, the number-one requested feature by our creators is to upload videos longer than 10 minutes."

There are 225,000 applications in the iPhone store, 60,000 in Google's Android store. But what hasn't been created yet?

The original 2007 iPhone had only one screenful of software icons, believe it or not. You could not install new ones of your own. It took a whole year for Apple to open the App Store, making it possible for the masses to download and install new applications -- or programs -- in the process, creating a whole new gadget category.

The store changed everything. Why just make calls, when you could auto-tune your singing voice, play virtual Ping-Pong or summon bodily sounds on command?

Google is a prime candidate to return some of its $30.1 billion in cash to investors through a stock buyback or dividend, according to shareholders and data compiled by Bloomberg.

"I don't think Google or anyone else can make a strong argument that they need $30 billion," says Ken Smith, a portfolio manager at Munder Capital Management in Birmingham, Mich., which holds Google shares. "I'd rather have the cash in my own pocket than have all of it sitting on the balance sheet."

Your smart phone applications are watching you -- much more closely than you might like.

Lookout Inc., a mobile-phone security firm, scanned nearly 300,000 free applications for Apple Inc.'s iPhone and phones built around Google Inc.'s Android software. It found that many of them secretly pull sensitive data off users' phones and ship them off to third parties without notification.

Asking Ask.com may now result in answers, not just links. On Tuesday, the search engine launched a new version that it described as "the first step in a multi-pronged strategy" to provide answers to users' questions, either from content on the web or from "previously unpublished knowledge shared by any of the millions of Ask.com users."

The company, an operating business of the IAC network of sites, said this functionality allows it to combine its proprietary search technology with the Ask.com community.

On Monday, Google introduced a new version of its Google Apps suite specifically designed for use by federal, state and local government agencies in the U.S. Google Apps for Government provides the same applications that are otherwise available, but with Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification , as well as other support for governmental regulations. The apps include Gmail, Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, and video sharing.

Score another win for Google. Despite Yahoo's intimate relationship with Microsoft's Bing search engine, Yahoo Japan has snubbed Bing in favor of the world search leader.

Yahoo Japan on Tuesday said it will tap Google's technology to power both its search engine and search ad-delivery system. But the decision may not have rested fully on Yahoo's shoulders.

Whether he's swimming with dolphins in the Pacific Ocean or drawing inspiration from rappers, Marc Benioff has broken the CEO mold while running Salesforce.com Inc. for the past decade.

Some of his antics seem calculated to make a point about the importance of daring to be unconventional, a method that has worked well for him.