Company News: Google, Reader's Digest, Apple, Nestlé

Internet search leader Google is considering opening retail stores in the U.S., according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Last year, Bloomberg reported that the company was planning its first stand-alone store at its European headquarters in Dublin. Google would be following a trail blazed by Apple, whose stores have helped fuel sales of iPhones and iPads. Microsoft expanded its retail presence to help sell Surface tablets. Google, which recently bought Motorola Mobility, could use brick-and-mortar outlets to showcase phones and tablets that use its Android operating system as well as its Nexus-branded handsets and Samsung Chromebook laptops.

The private equity group that owns Reader’s Digest has put the 91-year-old publishing company into bankruptcy to help it shed $465 million in debt. The Chapter 11 filing is the company’s second in four years. A group led by Ripplewood Holdings bought the publisher in 2007, paying $1.6 billion while taking on $800 million in debt. The publisher filed for bankruptcy two years later. Since emerging from that restructuring in 2010, Reader’s Digest has continued to struggle to adapt its 75 magazines to the shift toward digital media.