Yahoo has hired Mike Kail, former vice president of IT operations for Netflix, as its new chief information officer. “The position has been empty since David Dibble, who oversaw global technology infrastructure at Yahoo, left his position in July 2013,” ZDNet reports. Reporting directly to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Kail will lead the company IT and datacenter operations. "Technical infrastructure has always played an important role in Yahoo's ability to deliver the best possible user experiences,” Mayer said in a statement. 

Yelp is facing a class action lawsuit, which accuses the local business review site of letting fake negative reviews remain online in order to extract additional ad dollars from the subjects of those reviews. “The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Yelp shareholders by Joseph Curry, who claims that the company’s executives misled investors about its business practices in order to inflate Yelp’s stock price,” GigaOm reports. 

Trying to put its products in a better light, Microsoft is reportedly eying a fancy Fifth Avenue retail location. “The deal, at 677 Fifth Ave. near 53rd St., would give Microsoft a splashy presence on the top retail corridor in the country and put it just a stone's throw from its biggest rival Apple’s iconic glass cube store,” The Daily News reports. The 8,700-square-foot, two-story space eyed by Microsoft was last occupied by luxury fashion brand Fendi.” 

Instagram has seen the future, and it apparently looks a lot like Twitter. “Two years after being acquired by Facebook, Instagram is starting to look more and more like the big brother it almost had,” The Verge, referring to Twitter. Among other similarities, “when you follow someone new, Instagram now shows ‘Suggested’ users to follow, just like Twitter.” 

Straying farther from its core new business, Gannett Co. is reportedly ready to buy Cars.com in its entirety for $1.8 billion. The deal values the whole [auto-sales] business at about $2.5 billion,” Bloomberg reports, citing sources. The USA Today publisher already owns about 27% of the ecommerce giant. “As part of the deal, the four owners other than Gannett will have five-year agreements with Cars.com in which they will continue to sell advertising in their respective regions.” 

Danny Zappin, the co-founder and former CEO of Maker Studios, has raised $25 million to start another digital studio named Zealot Networks. After being fired from Maker, Zappin tried in vain tried to block a shareholder vote on Disney’s acquisition of the network. Regarding Zealot, Variety writes: “The company said it’s focused on [content] creators.” 

Following reports that Alibaba Group was close to investing a lot of money in Snapchat, The New York Times reports that the Chinese ecommerce giant is financing a number of tech firms. Already, Alibaba invested $215 million a messaging app named Tango, in March. Meanwhile, “Alibaba participated in a $170 million round for Fanatics, an online sports memorabilia retailer … And on Thursday, Kabam, a video game start-up, announced that it has received a $120 million investment from Alibaba.” 

What became of Google’s grand barge project? The one that consisted of two massive barges, which were supposed to be positioned on both coasts, and serve as giant showrooms for Google’s Glass gadget. As the Portland Press Herald reports, at least one of the barges is headed for the scrap yard, while the fate of the other remains in doubt. “It’s unclear why Google abandoned the project,” the paper reports. 

Branching out from the Web, Amazon is making a major push into local services like installations and repairs -- a market that Reuters reports is worth an estimated $400 million. “Amazon's experiment with services goes back to at least mid-2012 in its hometown of Seattle,” according to Reuters. “It's now expanded the tests to New York and Los Angeles.” Yet, “its foray into the [local services sector] comes as investors worry about Amazon's growing spending on initiatives with uncertain pay back.”