NBC is making an unprecedented digital push with its coverage of the Olympics this summer, making more than 2,000 hours of live content and 3,000 hours of on-demand content accessible via the NBCOlympics.com Web site. Cnet writes that while this is certainly a great opportunity for Olympics fans, it's a huge test for NBC, Microsoft -- which is powering the video service through its Silverlight video player -- and Limelight, whose network is being used to route the video streams to Internet service providers across the country. Just how big of a test is this? As NBC Universal Senior Vice …

We know that Google gathers lots of data about its users, but we've never known how the search giant uses it to filter individual search results. However, earlier this week, the company decided to shine a little light on that process, explaining how it customizes search results in a blog post. In short, Google uses search data to guess where you are and what you're most likely searching for. Now, a small note in the upper-right-hand corner of the results page will alert users when this is happening. For example, the note could read, "customized for the San Francisco metro …

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is planning to start its own venture capital unit. The venture will be lead by David Drummond, Google's SVP of corporate development and chief legal officer, and William Maris, a 33-year-old former entrepreneur. But details, such as how the group will be structured and what sorts of investments it will pursue, remain murky. In fact, the plans could still fall through. Google would join such tech and media giants as Intel Corp., Motorola, Comcast, Amazon and Walt Disney in setting up its own formal venture capital arm. Their respective investment records have been …

"We felt like we were under-delivering on a year-round basis," said Dave Finger, director of action sports for ESPN Digital Media. "We felt like we were missing out on covering action sports with the same voice and authenticity that we bring to stick and ball." Surfing, skateboarding, motocross and snowboarding are among the action sports in question. Estimates peg the size of this audience at anywhere from 27 million to 115 million-although most enthusiasts are only interested in their particular sport. Fans of action sports -- surfing, skateboarding, motocross, snowboarding and the like -- are an increasingly attractive, if elusive, …

In a rare acquisition, Google's YouTube acquired startup Omnisio, a service that lets users edit videos. Omnisio lets users extract sections of video clips found on YouTube, Google Video or Blip.tv and then mash them up to form their own embeddable video clips. According to TechCrunch, the all-cash deal is worth $15 million. Omnisio, which was founded by Australian trio Ryan Junee, Julian Frumar and Simon Ratner, has only been around since March 2008; TechCrunch points out that the sale is another win for owner Y Combinator, which invests small amounts of capital in companies at the idea stage. …

Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Yahoo are joining forces to create an experimental network that lets researchers test "cloud-computing" services projects that would reach billions of users at once. According to Reuters, "the goal is to promote open collaboration among industry, academic and government researchers by removing financial and logistical barriers to working on hugely computer-intensive, Internet-wide projects." In other words, HP, Intel and Yahoo are funding a massive cloud-computing research project, where the goal is to create a level-playing field for conducting that research -- i.e. a platform that doesn't belong to Google, Microsoft or Amazon. As Prabhakar Raghavan, the head …