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MIDDAY MARKETS: Techs fall, Dow rallies

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Monday's big merger was in tune with the day's trend: old economy supersedes the new. Primedia snapped up About.com while the Nasdaq tumbled 71.25 to 3,207.11 and the Dow Jones industrial average rose 191.68 to 10,782.30.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index fell 13 to 413.57.

Speciality magazine publisher Primedia Inc. (NYSE: PRM), down 4 to 11.25, will acquire search site About.com (Nasdaq: BOUT), up 0.13 to 24, in a deal worth $690 million. Investors weren't enthused.

Shares of Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) dipped in morning trading on continued concerns about the company's accounting methods and cash position. Amazon fell 2.62 to 33. AOL (NYSE: AOL) shed 0.45 to 47.55 and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) fell 2.63 to 52.63.

XO Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: XOXO), down 0.06 to 29.69, the broadband communications company formerly known as NEXTLINK/Concentric, said Monday net loss was $1.20 a share, slightly narrower than First Call's expected loss of $1.27 a share.

Globalstar Telecommunication (Nasdaq: GSTRF) fell short of analyst estimates Monday and saw its shares pummeled down 3.50 to 2.50.

El Sitio (Nasdaq: LCTO), down 0.19 to 3.69, and Ibero American Media Partners announced Monday they will merge, creating a content company for Spanish and Portuguese speakers. The combined entity, Claxson Interactive Group, will be the first publicly traded independent content company in Latin America.

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), up 2.19 to 69.88, is is in talks with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp about investing more than $1 billion in the media firm's Sky Global Networks Inc. satellite TV unit, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday.

Among other leading tech issues: Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) dropped 2.38 to 48.31, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) shed 1.06 to 45.31 and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) lost 2.06 to 32.13.