Yahoo and Intel and Hewlett Packard on Tuesday announced an alliance to advance "cloud computing," backing a trend that would reduce reliance on packaged software. Earlier this year Google and IBM teamed up for the same purpose, to advance research into providing software as a service on the Internet hosted by data centers instead of requiring people to install programs on their computers.

Yahoo, HP and Intel have partnered with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore and universities in the United States and Germany to create centers for collaborative research.

An example of cloud computing is web-based email offered by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other Internet operations. Google has expanded its online software offerings to include word documents, spread sheets and more.