H&R Block

Rich Skrenta thinks he has built a better search engine. This week, he's launching Blekko, whose web searches will only accept information from curated lists of trusted sites, mediated by users to filter out irrelevant results. But can Blekko compete with Google and Bing?

H&R Block has been a laggard in its online efforts, while competitor Intuit's TurboTax keeps gaining market share. To start remedying the situation, H&R Block this week agreed to pay $287.5 million for 2SS Holdings, which develops the desktop and online tax-prep software TaxACT.

H&R Block reported a 1.3% drop in net income from a year earlier, reflecting how taxpayers were hurt by unemployment caused by the Great Recession.

The maker of TurboTax and QuickBooks financial software is extending into electronic health-care records with its purchase of Medfusion. Given that 72% of consumers surveyed told Intuit they'd use an online tool for tracking health care, it may be another billion-dollar opportunity.

The following is a round-up of news likely to affect stock prices today: Alcoa (AA) reported a narrower net loss of $201 million, or 20 cents a share, but earned 10 cents a share after excluding charges, which was inline with analysts' average forecasts. Sales rose 18% to $4.89 billion, helped by...

Some of the companies making headlines today: H&R Block Inc. (HRB) said Friday it lost a larger-than-expected $133.6 million in the first quarter, about the same as a year ago, due to acquisition expenses and other costs that offset slightly higher revenues. On an adjusted basis, HRB lost 40...