Amid the gloom there were some bright patches. Network-gear giant Alcatel-Lucent on Thursday reported a quarterly loss of €40 million, a much better result than its €345 million loss one year earlier. The smaller loss and growth in the company's enterprise and services business helped buoy company shares, which rose by $0.22 on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday to close at $2.53. The company's market capitalization -- the value of its share price multiplied by all outstanding shares -- has plunged to $6 billion from about $35 billion before the merger of Alcatel and Lucent in 2006.

Security software results this week were mixed. McAfee on Thursday said revenue rose 7 percent to $409.7 million, beating analyst estimates of $395 million. Symantec reported Wednesday that net income rose $50 million to $140 million. But company executives said that they see a consumer spending decline and anticipate a slow holiday quarter in retail. Despite the strong quarter, that was enough to cause investors to flee, and company shares dropped by $2.61 Thursday to close at $12.20.

Stock market indexes have experienced history-making ups and downs over the past month. Despite the overall poor tech results this week, though, the U.S. GDP report was not quite as bad as expected -- the drop of 0.3 percent was better than expectations of a 0.5 percent decline. As a result, the tech-heavy Nasdaq index rose Thursday by 41 points to close at 1698.