Beyond Binary

Updated at 1:20 p.m. PDT with closing stock prices.

Tech stocks took another beating on Monday, although shares recovered somewhat in the final two hours of trading.

The Dow Jones Industrial average was down more than 700 points in mid-day trading, but recovered to close at 9,955.50 points, down 369.88 points, or 2.6 percent. The Nasdaq, meanwhile, dropped below 1,800 points, before closing at 1,862.96, down 84.43, or 4.3 percent. The CNET Tech Index closed Monday at 1,267.87 , down 63.1 points, or 4.7 percent.

Several major indexes, including the Dow and Nasdaq, traded at multiyear lows during the session, while the CNET Tech Index was at its lowest point since 2006.

SAP, which warned on Monday that its third quarter sales fell below estimates as business spending on software dropped, saw its shares off more than 15 percent, changing hands near the close at $39.76, down $5.89, or nearly 13 percent.

AMD, Palm, and RIM were all down double digit percentages for part of the day, though all the stocks managed to pare those losses significantly before trading closed. Google shares closed at $369.14, down $17.77, or 4.6 percent. Microsoft shares closed at $24.91, down $1.41, or more than 5 percent.

Yahoo shareholders, meanwhile, have even more reason to resent management that rejected Microsoft's $33-per-share offer. Yahoo shares closed Monday at $15.19, down 81 cents, or about 5 percent.

Apple was among the rare companies to end in positive territory, closing regular trading $98.14, up $1.07, or 1 percent.

I talked about the stock drop on today's CNET News Daily Debrief, above.

(Credit: Susan Dove/CNET Networks)

Microsoft landed another ad-serving deal on Tuesday, announcing it will be the exclusive third-party provider of contextual and paid search ads for the Wall Street Journal online and several other Dow Jones-owned sites.

The move is the latest in a string of deals, following Microsoft's expanded ad-serving deal with Facebook in October. In December, Microsoft announced a deal with Viacom that it valued at $500 million, though it didn't provide specific details on how it came to that figure. Last month, Microsoft signed a deal with another financial information company, Edgar Online.

In addition to WSJ.com, the latest deal also covers Marketwatch.com, Barrons.com, and AllThingsD.com. Contextual ads from Microsoft should start appearing on Dow Jones sites next month.

Unlike the Viacom and Edgar Online deals, which use the Atlas technology acquired as part of Microsoft's $6 billion Aquantive purchase, the Dow Jones deal is using Microsoft's homegrown AdCenter product. Microsoft is replacing two smaller firms that Dow Jones had been using--Pulse360, for contextual ads, and Business.com, for paid search.

Gordon McLeod, president of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, said in a statement that the deal should boost the company's ad revenue. "Microsoft's state-of-the-art advertising platform will enable us to dramatically improve our revenues from this key sector, and we look forward to working together."

Meanwhile, Microsoft said the move will bring a further 20 million unique visitors to Microsoft's ad network.

"This deal is a significant win for Microsoft for two key reasons," Microsoft senior VP Brian McAndrews said in a statement. "First, it makes the extended Microsoft advertising network the premier destination for advertisers interested in reaching financially minded users, as it complements our offering in this vertical through MSN Money and other syndication partners. Second, this deal is a strong indicator that we're gaining significant traction with our advertising platform."