Netflix shares surged in after-hours trading Wednesday after the US video service announced earnings better than expected by analysts and that it gained subscribers in the fourth quarter.

The Los Gatos, California-based company posted a quarterly net profit of $41 million and earnings per share of 73 cents, well above the 55 cents per share forecast by Wall Street analysts.

The United States will closely examine the European Commission's online privacy legislation and wants to ensure it will not be too costly for companies to do business, a senior U.S. diplomat said Thursday.

Philip Verveer, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy, welcomed European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding's focus on this area, but said her plans raised "quite complex" issues.

Japanese game giant Nintendo said Thursday it expected to lose 65 billion yen ($837 million) this year, more than three times the amount it had earlier predicted, citing a strong yen and price cuts.

The Kyoto-based firm also downgraded its annual sales forecast to 660 billion yen for the year to March, from an earlier forecast of 790 billion yen.

Google said Tuesday it is revising its privacy policies and changing how it collects and uses data from users of its services to provide more personalized search results and advertisements.

The Mountain View, California-based company said it is combining more than 60 privacy policies for its various services such as Internet search, Gmail, Google+ and YouTube into a single policy that will take effect from March 1.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Tuesday he was launching his own television chat show and promised interviews with "key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries".

No guests were unveiled, but a statement on the WikiLeaks website said the show would go on air in mid-March in 10 weekly half-hour episodes.

The Vatican's news website is getting between 8,000 and 10,000 hits a day with peaks of up to 16,000 hits over Christmas, the head of the Holy See's social media department said on Tuesday.

The website, which brings together all the Vatican's official communications and news from the Catholic Church around the world, was launched in June.

A tiny revolutionary fold-up car designed in Spain's Basque country as the answer to urban stress and pollution was unveiled Tuesday before hitting European cities in 2013.

The "Hiriko", the Basque word for "urban", is an electric two-seater with no doors whose motor is located in the wheels and which folds up like a child's collapsible buggy, or stroller, for easy parking.

The French online shopping website Twenga has filed a complaint against Google at the European Commission, accusing the Internet search giant of abusing its dominant position to eliminate any competition.

The commission, the European Union's competition watchdog, has been investigating Google since November 2010 following several complaints, with U.S. IT giant Microsoft filing its own grievance last year.

YouTube said that 60 hours of video are being uploaded every minute to the video-sharing site and it is attracting more than four billion views a day.

"In 2007 we started at six hours, then in 2010 we were at 24 hours, then 35, then 48," the Google-owned YouTube said in a blog post.

Japanese electronics giant Sony is in talks to take a stake of up to 30 percent in Olympus as the camera firm looks to shore up its finances after a $1.7 billion cover-up scandal, a report said Tuesday.

The electronics giant has proposed a capital and business tie-up with the camera and medical equipment maker, offering to take a maximum stake of about 20 to 30 percent, the Nikkei business daily said without naming its sources.