Has Amazon actually produced a tablet that can loosen Apple’s iron grip on the market? While it’s up to consumers decide, expert reviews are trickling in and telling a (highly-conflicting) story of their own. “The Kindle Fire is quite an achievement at $200,” deems Engadget. “It's a perfectly usable tablet … and perhaps the best, tightest integration of digital content acquisition into a mobile device that we've yet seen.” Yet, “When stacked up against other popular tablets, the Fire can't compete,” Engadget adds. “Its performance is a occasionally sluggish, its interface often clunky, its storage too slight, its …

Confirming earlier reports, Google just copped to acquiring social tech startup Katango. “Katango just announced that it’s been acquired by Google, and that it’ll be joining the Google+ team,” TechCrunch reports. What’s more, “We’re also hearing that Google isn’t only acquiring Katango for their talent -- it’s interested in their technology as well.” “The acquisition is of particular interest for a few reasons, the obvious one being that Google+ is now better positioned to compete with Facebook and its Smart Lists,” writes VentureBeat. Recently launched as an iPhone app -- to help Facebook users selectively share content …

In what you might call a backend bombshell, Adobe this week revealed plans to ditch Flash for mobile devices, and instead focus on HTML5 and Adobe AIR. Who cares? For one, “those [people] whose job it is to market and sell Android tablets,” writes AllThingsD. “Flash support has been one of the key advantages that aspiring iPad competitors have used to tout their devices.” “Adobe will have a PR nightmare on its hands trying to convince its three million Flash developers to scrap projects in Flash and move to HTML5,” notes ReadWriteWeb, citing comments from Carlos …

The Kindle Fire hasn’t even launched, but Amazon’s tablet already has more apps and content deals that it can count.  Along with “several thousand more apps” -- from Facebook and Twitter to popular games from Zynga and EA -- Amazon has just announced that it too will have support for Netflix and Pandora. “Maybe the Kindle Fire isn’t as ‘media-deficient’ a tablet as [Barnes & Noble] CEO William Lynch would have us believe,” quipped TechCrunch. “Streaming services are essential for the success of any tablet, but app offerings in a broader context might end up being the major …

Following a number of related efforts, American Express just launched a $100 million fund to invest in start-ups and companies in the digital commerce space. “The digital commerce initiative will make investments in a number of areas involving the digital commerce experience, including loyalty and rewards, mobile and online payment management, fee-based services, security and fraud detection and data analysis,” TechCrunch reports. “Amex has already been investing in digital commerce, with companies such as Rearden Commerce and Payfone,” Forbes notes. “The new strategic investment program will help Amex stay close to emerging technology in these different …

Further bolstering its premium content strategy, YouTube has entered into a significant partnership with the Walt Disney Company. Calling the deal “small on its surface,” The New York Times writes: “Disney Interactive Media and YouTube … will spend a combined $10 million to $15 million on original video series … But the alliance is striking because of what it tacitly acknowledges about each company’s weaknesses.” “This could be the start of something big,” Gizmodo suggests. “It will be the first time the media conglomerate would take advantage of the YouTube phenomenon, which they’ve been ignoring successfully …

Given the rocky run up to Groupon's IPO, Web watchers were shocked on Friday by Wall Street’s embrace of the company.    “Groupon -- an Internet darling with no profits but plenty of momentum -- stunned Wall Street on Friday with a premiere that echoed the dot-com boom,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “Groupon’s IPO attracted interest even as internal missteps, unprofitability and an expensive valuation compared with its peers made some investors skeptical,” Bloomberg writes. As AllThingsD first reported on Thursday, Groupon priced its public offering at $20 a share, several dollars above the expected price …

Take that, Apple! Looking for any advantage it can get in the white-hot tablet wars, Amazon just debuted a digital-book lending library, which will only be available to owners of its Kindle and Kindle Fire devices who are also subscribers to its Amazon Prime program. “Bottom line, it’s a big move by Amazon in an attempt to give its Kindle devices an edge against Apple’s iPad and Barnes & Nobles’s Nook, and boost Amazon Prime subscriptions at the same time,” writes Msnbc.com.            But, is the bookish incentive enough to influence consumers?  Hard to believe, as “None of the …

You know it’s a slow news day when Web watchers are buzzing about Google’s latest Gmail redesign. In their defense, however, the changes have real implications for Google’s far-reaching social strategy. “Gmail joins Google Search, Maps, Docs, and Calendar as a handful of core Google search and messaging and collaboration products to be cleaned up,” reports eWeek. “The redesign will help the programs hew more closely to the new Google+ social network, which [is] being threaded in varying degrees throughout Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Search and other Web services,” eWeek adds.  Some analysts even suggest that the changes signal …

Despite its own uncertain future, Yahoo just acquired ad technology firm Interclick for a reported $270 million. “Not the move you’d expect for a company undergoing a ‘strategic review,’” writes The Wall Street Journal. “Yahoo is in the middle of a complicated chess game to maybe sell the company, or something.” “While not a huge deal, the fact that the company is making acquisitions while it is supposedly shopping for a buyer is only going to increase the Street’s fears that there will be no buyer for Yahoo, after all,” suggests Forbes. “It’s an odd time …