Before the bell: Street awaits Bernanke testimony; BBY, PFE, RIMM

United Airlines of UAL Corp. (NASDAQ: UAUA) also announced Wednesday it was grounding planes, saying it won't fly 52 Boeing 777s until safety tests are completed, after discovering that a routine pre-flight safety check was not performed. United joins Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV), American Airlines (NYSE: AMR) and Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) in having to ground aircraft to perform safety tests.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) launched a new service, Amazon TextBuyIt, that lets shoppers compare prices and buy things by texting on their cell phones. Meaning, that while we now shop at a brick-and-mortar store but want to compare prices at Amazon, all that is needed is texting the ISBN or UPC of the product to a preset number. If we then want to buy it from Amazon, we can immediately do so by texting the appropriate numbers/letters. Amazing!

Could it be that Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) is gearing up to take on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s iPhone? Apparently, Sprint is counting on the new Samsung Instinct handset to do just that as it hopes the device will help it gain back market share and stop customer attrition. The Instinct, exclusive to Sprint, will offer full touch-screen functionality in addition to a virtual QWERTY keypad as well as a multitude of other features. Well, we'll have to wait and see ... who knows?

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) Chief Information Officer Douglas Merrill is leaving the search giant to become president of EMI's digital unit, according to sources. EMI is a unit of private-equity firm Terra Firma. The move has many in the industry scratching their heads as Google is considered a innovative company while EMI is struggling.

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) will be using a conference today to push its new Atom processors for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and embedded computing solutions. With Intel missing out on the chips for cellphones market, it hopes this would be the next consumer gadget.

You'd think Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) would learn at some point how to avoid PR messes, but no. Well, the retailer giant finally decided to drop its suit against a former Wal-Mart employee who suffered severe brain damage in a traffic accident and won't have to pay back the company for the cost of her medical care.