Spending on Internet ads in the US hit $4.9 billion in Q1, up 26% and a new high. Expectations are it'll work out to around $20 billion for the year, up $3 billion. Some punters think Google is going to $750. It's managed to stay safely north of $500 now since the first of the month.

HP Raids Oracle
HP has plucked Randall Runk out of Oracle to head US enterprise sales for its Technology Solutions Group. He's there, as you might suspect, to grow revenues and margin and expand into the mid-market. He will also be responsible for US software sales, alliance sales and support, reporting to Jack Novia, head of TSG in the Americas. Runk was senior VP of Oracle's North America strategic account sales. He has a PricewaterhouseCoopers background.

What Do You Suppose He Knows?
Sun's new board member Michael Marks of private equity house Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and chairman of Flextronics - who's supposed to be canny with investments - bought a million dollars worth of Sun's stock about a month after he joined the board. With his own money!! Kohlberg already has $700 million in the company. Marks' flyer is described as Sun's biggest insider purchase in three years.

Dell Exploring Services
Michael Dell told the Financial Times that he is contemplating a series of acquisitions and partnerships that would turn Dell into more of a services business. Seems that despite IBM growth hiccups with services, Dell's $6 billion services side, 10% of its business, is growing faster than its computer sales. Of course as things stand that might not be saying much. Meanwhile, Dell is expected to stop making TVs.

Sun Says Apple Will Use its File System
Sun's chatty CEO Jonathan Schwartz breached Apple security and publicly disclosed that Leopard, Apple's next-generation operating system, is going to substitute Sun's 128-bit open source ZFS file system for its nine-year-old HFS+. ZFS pools storage, which basically means you just plug in drives and you're off.