The idea to spinoff the PC division was first proposed in August by former CEO Leo Apotheker as part of a sweeping overhaul he was trying to do to the company. This was one of the last proposals he made before being ousted from his position.

The decision to review the company’s PC business came as a result of a massive shift by consumers towards smartphones and tablet computers. HP launched its own high-profile tablet, th TouchPad, but it decided to discontinue the tablet just two months after its launch, doing a $99 fire sale on the tablets that techies gobbled up as fast as they could. HP said it would make one more round of TouchPads, some have estimated around 200,000 tablets, to try to make up for some of the high demand it saw during the $99 sale, but even the 200,000 additional units will not be able to keep up with the demand, and they too will probably sell out in a day or two.

HP is still the world’s largest PC seller, but revenues have been trending lower. During the quarter that ended in July, the company had PC sales of $9.59 billion, down from $9.92 billion during the same period last year. Despite this, HP feels as though it is still a very important part of the company and worth trying to save.

The decision to keep the company’s PC business is probably the best decision for the company. The PC business may be shrinking, but that does not mean that HP should abandon it. As Whitman stated, the goal is not to transform HP, but instead to take its incredible assets, and make them greater.

Whitman assured investors that HP was going to get back into the tablet business, but it is not going to backtrack on its decision to eliminate its WebOS operating system, but instead will focus on tablets running Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8.

Time will tell if HP is able to turn its PC business around, but for now its probably the right decision to at least allow Whitman the opportunity to try.

Financial terms have not been disclosed, but eBay did announce that it plans to integrate its Paypal system into the mobile app.

Where offers users “location aware” advertisements, as well as a “mobile discovery” service that allows its users to find new and interesting things close to where they are.

eBay’s plan to integrate Paypal into Where would allow users to quickly pay for great local deal wherever they may be. Where currently has around 120,000 businesses as its clients, and claims to have around 4 million current users.

eBay is definitely looking to expand its business where ever possible. Just a few weeks ago it announced that it would be buying GSI Commerce, an online marketing company for $2.4 billion.

Music downloads has been a major driving force for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) through its iTunes service, and Google is looking to grab a piece of that pie. According to sources, users will be able to go onto the new Google music site and search for a particular song or artist. Suppose you search for the band U2, you will get a list of available songs, which if clicked will launch the song into a streaming player, and also provide the user the option to download the music.

Google stock has traded up to a new 52 week high today, trading as high as $559.35, and is currently trading up 0.9% to $556.73, up $5.01.

Google has been under increasing pressure as of late to turn a profit from the video sharing site that it paid $1.65 billion for in 2006, and today’s deal should help give its advertising revenues a nice little bump.

Time Warner will sell ads for the clips, and give a percentage of that advertising money to Google, but there was no specifics made as to what share each company would be getting from the advertising revenues.

While most retailers are facing hard time, Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) actually had a sales increase in the month. As consumers tighten up their spending, and look for cheaper products, it doesn’t really come as much of a surprise that shoppers are heading into Wal-Mart stores, which typically have the reputation of lower prices.

Let’s take a look at the numbers; For the quarter, Exxon posted $2.22 per share on profits of $11.68 billion and a stunning $138 in revenue. If you want to look at it in a different way, that means that the company made profits of $1,485.55 every single second of the quarter.

Sounds great, but analysts were disappointed and were expecting to see the company come in much higher, with EPS of $2.47, and revenues of $144.4 billion.

As a result the stock is dropping today, as traders have looked past the record setting numbers, and driven shares of the company down by about 3.5% after an hours trading this morning.

The main culprit was, believe it or not, the high oil prices. For Exxon, since the company both produces it own oil, and refines it into gasoline, the record high prices that oil has reached lately have put a crimp in the company’s gasoline profit margins. Since Exxon actually buys more oil than it sells, the rising oil prices hit the company’s refining margins, since oil prices were about twice what they were during the same period last year, with gasoline prices “only” rising about 30%.

So, the boys over at Exxon can enjoy sitting back and enjoying the title of the biggest quarterly profit by a U.S. company once again, but if they want to keep a smile on their faces, they are going to have to continue to look for ways to overcome the profit margins in their refining business moving forward.

These changes were (in summary):

1. Increased final selling fees
2. Allowing PayPal to hold certain payments up to 21 days
3. Removing the option for for sellers to leave negative feedback on sellers

The eBay boycott was supposed to last a week, but was extended to last 2 weeks, and the impacts of the strike are still up for debate. While eBay is denying that the strike had any impact on its business, sellers are furious and accusing the site of padding it’s listings in order to create the false allusion that the strike was of little or no success.

There have been several posts on the eBay forum with users posting what they consider to be viable proof of eBay’s shady practices, and one user has gone so far as to post a video on YouTube illustrating what he considers to be the fraudulent listings.

For now, eBay is claiming that it had a bug in its system which resulted in some fake item listings, but has denied any intentional wrong doing.

You can be sure that we have not heard the end of this saga!

The current strike stems from disapproval over a couple of new changes being made by eBay management. There are three main concerns that eBay sellers are upset about:

1. While the site did lower its initial listing fees for selling items, it significantly raised its final transaction fees. This move has been seen by eBay power sellers as a move that is aimed directly at the more successful eBay users.
2. A second change that has upset sellers is the decision by eBay to stop allowing sellers to post feedback on sellers. This decision has frustrated sellers who argue that this is a valuable tool for weeding out bids from buyers that are unlikely to follow through on their purchase.
3. Finally, another decision that is backfiring in eBay’s face is the decision that it will being to hold certain PayPal payments by up to 21 days in an attempt to combat fraud on the site.

All changes combined were just too much for many eBay users, and have led to a widespread boycott of the site that took place all last week, and has resulted in a decrease of roughly 13% in the number of items that are listed for sale on the site.

While the boycott has definitely been impacting the number of items listed, it is still not clear if eBay is going to take action to reduce the level of animosity within its community. Sensing that eBay is not taking notice, the community has decided to extend its boycott by another week, with the extension pushing the strike all the way out to March 3.

What about you guys? Do we have any eBay users out there? Are you participating in the current boycott, and if so, what other options have you been exploring during your hiatus from eBay?