Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) and eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and other tech firms are so opposed to the Stop Online Piracy Act [SOPA] that there’s been talk of a “nuclear option” where they would simultaneously go “dark” to protest the legislation. The blackout would most likely happen on Jan. 23, but the Senate is scheduled to debate the Stop Online Piracy Act on Jan. 24.

Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook says customer response in the nation of 1.3 billion people has been remarkably “off the charts” and also states that the iPhone 4S will be available in China beginning on Jan. 13.

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IBM (NYSE:IBM) snatches privately held Green Hat. Shares are down premarket, but for an undisclosed amount as it makes another strategic buy in the cloud computing space.

Acme Packet’s (NASDAQ:APKT) fourth quarter decline is leading to broad-based weakness in networking equipment names. Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR), F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV), Riverbed Technology Inc. (RRVBD), Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU), LM Ericsson Telephone Company (NASDAQ:ERIC), Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO), Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARUN) are all down as well. The company’s soft guidance and comments about soft demand from North American telecommunication companies lead to fears of a weak 2012 capex environment.

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Netflix’s (NASDAQ:NFLX) propensity to upset its users during 2011 over price hikes did not outweigh the fact that over 2 billion hours of television was watched by members including shows and movies via the company’s streaming service during the fourth quarter alone. This could signal a change in the company’s momentum.

Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) will be streaming live through a blog from Wall Street Journal the discussion of appointing Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer. He is an experienced technologist, but he lacks experience-selling advertisements, which might come up, as a possible topic of conversation.

HTC is adopting high-end smartphone CPUs, claims JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM). HTC expects the phone vendor to ship devices featuring Nvidia’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) Tegra 3 and Qualcomm’s (NASDAQ:QCOM) MSM8960 chips by April. It could result in both higher selling prices for chipmakers, and higher royalties for ARM (NASDAQ:ARMH).

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To contact the reporter on this story: Tanya Harding at staff.writers@wallstcheatsheet.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Damien Hoffman at editors@wallstcheatsheet.com

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