Wall Street looked set to open higher on the last day of the week, albeit in low-volume trade ahead of Monday's Labor Day holiday.
Stock-index futures held modest gains after the government reported personal income rose 0.2 percent and spending fell 0.1 percent in July.
Google said it would develop drones to deliver goods, following in the footsteps of Amazon.com; The Wall Street Journal reported Johnson & Johnson would look for an acquirer for its medical-device making unit, valued at as much as $2 billion.
A final reading of the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment survey for August is expected after the opening bell.
U.S. stocks declined on Thursday, pulling the back below 2,000, as concerns about Ukraine overtook upbeat reports on the U.S. economy—second-quarter growth was revised higher to an annualized 4.2 percent.
Wall Street also tracked the situation between Russia and Ukraine, with fighting between separatists and government forces reportedly intensifying and NATO releasing satellite images of Russian troop movements in eastern Ukraine, a claim dismissed by Russia. The European Union and United States are warned of additional sanctions against Russia, even as the EU started discussions in Moscow on Friday on an interim agreement with Ukraine to restart natural-gas flows.
"The latest developments suggest a meaningful escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and have raised the risks of additional Western sanctions against Russia, in our view," said analysts in a Barclays Research note on Friday morning.
—By CNBC's Katy Barnato