Tech losses slow market gains

A bad day for technology stocks Friday slowed a recent surge in the stock market.

Microsoft led the slump, falling the most in more than four years after the company wrote off nearly $1 billion on its new tablet computer and reported declining revenue for its Windows operating system.

Google shares dropped after the company's revenue fell below analysts' forecasts, partly because the Internet search leader's ad prices took an unexpected dip.

With tech stocks falling, the Standard & Poor's 500 index managed a gain of 2.72 points, or 0.2 percent, to an all-time high of 1,692.09. The S&P 500 is up 5.3 percent in July.

Despite the market's broad advance, a growing list of poor tech results is raising concerns about the economy and the stock market.

Intel and Bay also reported weak results this week, and chip-maker Advanced Micro reported a second-quarter loss because of a worldwide slump in personal computer demand.

Technology "has definitely been a sector that people have been expecting big things from and it has not delivered," said Randy Frederick, managing director of active trading and derivatives at the Schwab Center for Financial Research.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 4.80 points, or 0.03 percent, to 15,543.74. If not for the declines in Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM, the Dow would have gained 70 points.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite fell 23.66 points, or 0.7 percent, to 3,587.61. The index was the only major market benchmark to end the week lower, falling 0.4 percent.