THE WRAP: Sol frees up one position as thousands more go

This week Sol Trujillo announced his departure and leading vendors disclosed thousands more.

After weeks of rumors, Sol Trujillo confirmed the end of four controversy-filled years when he said he would step down as CEO on June 30.

Nortel offloaded 3,200 more staff and said it would not pay executive bonuses for 2008.

Lenovo cut 450 jobs in its home market as analysts calculated that it continued to lose market share. Cisco laid off 250 and plans to shed up to 2,000 staff this year.

SmarTone's profit fell 68% in the second half of 2008. It forecast 2009 would be worse.

PCCW's privatization was delayed another month after a Hong Kong court allowed a probe into vote-rigging claims to go ahead.

A global warming satellite crashed near Antarctica shortly after take-off.

 After Gmail went down for between two and a half and four hours, Google apologized, offer three weeks' free service for corporate customers and established an apps status dashboard.

IBM affirmed its positive outlook for the year, predicting growth in the services business in the first quarter.

Yahoo's CFO left the company as new CEO Carol Bartz reshaped her team. Apple told shareholders that Steve Jobs - who celebrated his 54th birthday this week - would return to the company in June.

India added a record 15.4 million new subs in January, smashing the previous record of 10.8 million.

Nokia Siemens Networks won a $1 billion bundle of China contracts. AT&T said it would spend a billion on its global network. Chinese portal Netease boosted Q4 net profit 48% to $84 million, despite a $32 million foreign exchange loss.

A US court upheld the insider-trading conviction of former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio.

Scamsters hacked into the email account of UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw to send hundreds of emails to people in his address book asking for money. Sony Ericsson apologized for a phishing spam that appeared to come from the company domain.

A UK peer was jailed for 12 weeks after he crashed into a parked car while sending a text message.

Microsoft is planning to port its Zune software to the TV, not to the phone, and said it had a solution for the chubby finger problem.

A French town plans to change its name to get a better search ranking.

Google confirmed it wasn't Atlantis that people could see under the Atlantic Ocean on Google Earth.