.ASPX And .PHP URL's Don't Rank Well In Google
Website-Infecting SQL Injection Attacks Hit 450,000 Per Day
Originally Posted at USA Today

Cybercriminals are spreading invisible infections far and wide across the Internet by hammering hundreds of thousands of websites each day with so-called SQL injection attacks.

The trend started last summer and has continued to accelerate. IBM Internet Security Systems says it identified 50% more infected Web pages in the last three months of 2008 than it did in all of 2007.

Click on one and you won't notice anything. Your PC gets turned into an obedient "bot," short for robot, deployed to attack other computers. All of your sensitive data get stolen.

SQL attacks take aim at the database layer of websites. They typically were manual attacks designed to pilfer customer data from merchant websites. But last June someone figured out how to automate the attacks, and use them to plant infections.

"It was a brilliant tactical move. You sit back and wait for someone to visit the site, and soon you infect thousands of PCs," says Ryan Barnett, Breach Security's director of research.

An infected PC thereafter gets put to work delivering spam and spreading more infections. And any sensitive data, such as log-ons and account numbers, get stolen.

For the first five months of 2008 IBM ISS helped large corporations block about 5,000 SQL attacks a day. By mid-June, daily attacks spiked to 25,000; by October they topped 450,000 a day. Holly Stewart, IBM ISS threat response manager, says the infections take advantage of security flaws in cool website features, such as online-delivered video, music, photos, documents and work files.

"Web applications are one of the most outward facing components a corporation could have, and one of the least protected," she says. "And SQL injection is the fastest-growing category of attacks affecting Web applications."

Giant financial institutions and online merchants have put up strong defenses, says Phil Neray, vice president of security strategy at Guardium, a database security firm. "The same is not necessarily true of regional banks and credit unions, smaller online retailers and state government agencies."

Security experts say consumers must keep updates for anything to do with their browser current, though most now do not do this. This includes updates for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, iTunes, QuickTime, Windows Media Player and RealPlayer. Such updates increasingly include important security patches that can block infections from taking hold.

Peak Positions Organic SEO News has more on why .aspx .php urls struggle to rank in google

Google's Data Mining System - Packaged For The Masses
As Originally Posted to The New York Times

Cloudera is the quintessential Silicon Valley story.

Three of the top engineers from Google, Yahoo and Facebook have teamed up with an ex-Oracle executive to tackle the problems inherent in quickly analyzing big piles of data. On Monday, they’re revealing a commercial product based on the open source software Hadoop, which provides the analytical magic behind the world’s biggest Web sites. The team at Cloudera, based in Burlingame, Calif., think they can extend Web smarts to the business world, aiding companies in retail, insurance, bio-tech and oil and gas.

Hadoop is the open-source version of the file system and MapReduce technology developed by Google. Google has used such software to rewire its entire search index, making it possible for the company to run ever-faster searches on cheap servers and to ask questions of its vast data stores and receive coherent answers.

Rather than keeping data locked in a central database, Google spreads information across thousands of servers. Engineers can then send out requests to these servers via MapReduce and gain new insights into peoples’ searching behavior and the relationships between Web sites. This process makes for more consistent Google search engine optimization results, and best of all, MapReduce keeps these complicated jobs humming along even when computers fail because of its ability to maintain a cohesive picture of all the systems.

While Google has kept the deep details on this technology to itself, the company did publish a couple of papers describing some of the underlying principles. That gave Doug Cutting, formerly a software consultant and now a Yahoo engineer, enough information to create an open-source take on the code.

Yahoo has since invested millions of dollars improving Hadoop and uses the technology to figure out what users should see on its home page, based on their surfing habits, and what ads to display next to search results.

Other Web 2.0 users, including Microsoft, Facebook and Fox Interactive Media, have picked up Hadoop as well.

The founders of Cloudera argue that the analytical powers of Hadoop can benefit a whole new class of businesses. For example, they want to show biotech firms new ways of analyzing genome and protein data and give oil and gas firms new ways of digging through their reservoir data.

The pitch has proved attractive enough for Accel Partners to pump money into the start-up. Diane Greene, the co-founder of VMware; Marten Mickos, the former chief executive of MySQL; and Gideon Yu, the chief financial officer at Facebook, have invested in the company as well.

While Hadoop remains free, Cloudera plans to sell support and consulting services around the software.

The backgrounds of the executives point to the classic Silicon Valley nature of the story.

Just 26, Jeff Hammerbacher has already worked on Wall Street and at Facebook after graduating from Harvard, where he earned a degree in math. Christophe Bisciglia, 28, arrived at Google after raising and selling horses online during his high school years.

Amr Awadallah, 38, arrived in the United States from Egypt and secured a job at Yahoo, where he helped develop Hadoop. And Mike Olson, the 46-year-old chief executive, is a database executive that sold an open-source software maker called Sleepycat to Oracle in 2006.

While Google could make a fuss about intellectual property rights to the technology, the company has given Cloudera its blessing. Mr. Bisciglia discussed the company with Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, last March.

“He agreed that this technology is not just for researchers, and it’s good for Google to make this pervasive,” Mr. Bisciglia said. “The more data people create, the more data Google can slurp up.”

A number of prominent computer scientists have hailed Hadoop as the right answer for an age when companies have moved from dealing with gigabytes of data to terabytes and now petabytes (one petabyte is equal to 1 million gigabytes or 1,000 terabytes). It’s one thing to store all of that information and another thing to be able to mine it in an efficient manner.

“It is a new reality that people have the ability to store and analyze terabytes and petabytes of data,” Bisciglia said. “Now they need the tools to process it.”

Google Accounts For 71% Of Internet Searches In February
Originally Posted at The Wall Street Journal

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Google Inc. (GOOG) accounted for 72% of all Internet searches in the U.S. last month, according to data provider Hitwise.

Far behind was Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) at 17%, Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) MSN at 6% and IAC/InteractiveCorp.'s (IACI) Ask.com with 4%.

Hitwise, which sampled 10 million U.S. Internet users, has shown Google at the same level for the past few months. A year earlier, Google accounted for 66% of all U.S. searches. Meanwhile, the portion of searches on Yahoo, MSN and Ask fell 17%, 20% and 10%, respectively.

While Google apparently is maintaining its lead as a search engine, the company's advertising business appears to be under increasing pressure as fewer shoppers search for products online and advertisers spend less. Earlier this month, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said the economic situation is "pretty dire" and his company is "not immune" to current conditions.

Google's shares recently traded up 6%, amid a general market rally. The stock price has lost almost half its value since May.

The Hitwise figures also show search engines continue to be the main way Internet users navigate to industry categories, and that organic search engine optimization is still the best way to push your site rankings. Comparing February numbers with a year earlier, business and finance, sports, online video and social-networking categories showed double-digit increases in the share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

In addition, the Hitwise survey shows the length of search queries has increased in the past year to more than eight words from an average of five.

Google Searches as Early Warning For Disease Outbreaks
Originally Posted at The Wall Street Journal

Last summer, for a month before Canadian officials announced an outbreak of listeriosis that would kill some 20 people, Google searches seeking information on the disease were on the rise.

That finding, published this week in Canadian Medical Association Journal, is the latest sign that public-health types are trying to figure out how to mine Internet search data as a potential early-warning system for disease outbreaks.

Think of it as a wonkier example of Google Flu Trends, the tool Google.org rolled out last fall to mine Americans’ search patterns in an effort to track flu outbreaks.

There is a certain, basic logic to all this. You find out someone in your family has listeriosis, you go home and Google it. Multiply that across an outbreak, and it will add up. Interestingly, researchers found that searches for “listeria” — a less technical term for the disease, which is caused by eating tainted food — rose only after the official announcement, perhaps in response to media stories that used the term.

The authors point out some important unanswered questions about how public-health officials might actually use data from the likes of Google. There would likely be lots of false alarms, as factors other than a true disease outbreak prompted search spikes. And it’s unclear just how much of a spike from baseline levels would warrant further investigation.

What’s more, the potential false alarms might spook the public. Google already offers Google Trends, which lets anybody see how the volume of searches for a given term changes over time.

The paper was written by researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Ottawa Health Research Institute. The Harvard author has received research funding from Google.org as well as the National Institutes of Health.

Time Warner Hunts Head At Google For New AOL Chief
Originally Posted at The Wall Street Journal

Time Warner Inc. announced a leadership overhaul at its AOL unit Thursday, naming Google Inc. Senior Vice President Tim Armstrong to succeed its chairman and chief executive, Randy Falco.

In a move that could be a precursor to a spinoff of all or parts of AOL, Time Warner said Mr. Falco and his No. 2 -- President and Chief Operating Officer Ron Grant -- will leave the company, clearing the way for 37-year-old Mr. Armstrong to take AOL's reins next month.

Mr. Armstrong's vault to AOL is seen as a major coup for the Time Warner unit, which has been limping badly in its efforts to shift to an ad-supported business model under Mr. Falco. Mr. Armstrong said he looked forward to exploring "the right structure and future for AOL."

The reshuffling is the latest in a number of shakeups at AOL. As the unit's performance has soured and its brand faded, Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes has flagged a possible spinoff or merger with a rival. Mr. Bewkes spent much of last year attempting to orchestrate a merger with Yahoo Inc., but a deal failed to materialize.

AOL, which saw a 20% slide in total revenue last year, has ushered in several new senior executives, including former Yahoo executive Gregory Coleman last month to succeed Lynda Clarizio as president of its Web advertising division. He became the third top ad sales executive at the company in little more than a year.

Mr. Armstrong's move is a blow to Google, which has lost several senior executives in the past year. The company's senior connection to Madison Avenue, Mr. Armstrong was a member of Google's Operating Committee, the core group of executives who lead the company, and on the front lines of its plans to expand into new advertising formats.

But those efforts have been slow going, despite major acquisitions Mr. Armstrong helped shepherd, and people close to Google have suggested there wasn't much further he could climb.

He considered leaving the company in 2007, according to people familiar with the matter, but stayed after Google CEO Eric Schmidt and others fought hard to keep him.

In a statement Thursday, Mr. Schmidt praised Mr. Armstrong's contributions to Google and said the company would announce an internal candidate as his successor in the coming weeks.

Mr. Armstrong said in an interview that Time Warner came to him in recent weeks to discuss taking over the top job at AOL. He said his first priority is to meet with company employees to better understand the culture, then plot out his strategy for the Internet company.

"They've done a very nice job of growing traffic. They are in a position now to be a major player in all types of Internet- based advertising," he said.

AOL is the fourth-largest Web property behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, attracting 108.4 million unique visitors in January, according to comScore.

Pali Research analyst Rich Greenfield said Mr. Armstrong's appointment was a "significant positive" for Time Warner shares, and noted that the only reason an executive of his pedigree would take such a role would be "the ability to manage a public company of his own in the near future."

The overhaul is an admission that AOL's strategy has fallen short of Time Warner's expectations. Mr. Bewkes plucked Mr. Falco from NBC to run AOL in November 2006.

He also dispatched Mr. Grant, a trusted lieutenant, to help reshape the struggling unit, which had become a thorn in Time Warner's side since its disastrous merger in 2001.

Mr. Falco and Mr. Grant couldn't be reached to comment.

While Mr. Falco had little Internet industry experience, Time Warner executives hoped that his cachet with Madison Avenue would help the company in its transition to an ad-supported business.

But Mr. Falco struggled to shake off criticism that he was a television executive who didn't understand the Web.

Mr. Falco attempted to turn around the business with more than $1.6 billion of acquisitions. But AOL is still struggling to digest those acquisitions, against a backdrop of slowing advertising growth and slumping subscription revenue.

Yahoo's Request to Move American Airlines Lawsuit Denied
One More in a Long Line of Pay Per Click Trademark Infringement Lawsuits

from Mercury News

Yahoo's request to move suit denied

A federal appeals court has rejected Yahoo's bid to move a trademark lawsuit filed by American Airlines from Texas to Northern California.

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo wanted the case transferred because its sponsored search agreement says any disputes must be settled by courts in Northern California or another site picked by the company.

But a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled Wednesday that the contract clause didn't apply to the trademark claim made by American.

American sued Yahoo last year in federal district court in Fort Worth — American's hometown — charging that Yahoo's search policies infringed on the airline's trademarks.

American complained that when visitors to Yahoo's Web site typed in trademark terms such as AAdvantage, the name of American's frequent-flier program, the search engine directed them to competitors who pay Yahoo for the traffic.

American settled a similar lawsuit against Google last year.

Hotels Using Social Networks To Build Connections
As Originally Posted at PR Web

TravelCLICK Launches Social Media Optimization Solution at ITB in Berlin

Chicago and Berlin (PRWEB ) March 11, 2009 -- With the increasing number of social media and consumer-generated content (CGC) sites, people are spending their time online differently. Today it's about conversations--interactions that go beyond the one-on-one to one-to-many through a series of networked relationships that connect us to people, places and events like never before. To avoid being left behind, hotels need to consider being on the sites where consumers now spend their online hours. According to Jerome Wise, vice president of eCommerce for TravelCLICK International, the challenge for hoteliers is to understand these evolving channels and how they can be used to reach new markets. "Social media can provide an essentially 'free' sales and marketing channel for building connections, community and, ultimately, commerce for hoteliers who are savvy in the new order of online marketing," said Wise.

Understanding how to leverage this trend to grow brand awareness and consumer reach through proactive product placement in the social media sites is an essential element of the marketing mix for today's hotel marketers. Consistent, targeted branding and relevant messages are the keys to leveraging the power of these networks.

In response to this need, TravelCLICK is introducing a new Social Media Optimization (SMO) solution for hotels and cruise marketplace leaders. The personalized program is designed to harness the viral power of the social networks--such as Facebook, Bebo, and StudiVZ--to connect hotels with new target audiences worldwide. The offering leverages the expertise of TravelCLICK's award-winning Internet Marketing Services team to develop and implement a hotel-specific social media plan, including:

• Research and strategy to determine the most appropriate sites, depending on the hotel's profile and target guest demographics
• Creation of customized profiles on at least 10 sites (social networking sites, consumer review sites, media sharing sites, mapping and CGC business sites, and user-generated content sites)
• Submission of content and reviews on all target sites
• Support and ongoing monitoring of engagements
• Quarterly reporting on interactions and responses

The benefits of SMO go beyond leveraging social networks for their marketing value. By having a targeted strategy across sites, hoteliers and purveyors of discount Canada cruises can increase traffic to their website and also enhance their search engine optimization ranking by increasing the amount of strong content and relevant links to and from their hotel website.

"According to Google™, networking is going to be the second-most popular online activity by 2012, overtaking shopping and surpassing both communication--such as email--and entertainment," added Wise. "Hoteliers who explore social networking early on in its development will have a clear competitive advantage as it matures."

With this new capability, TravelCLICK brings even more power to its comprehensive online Internet marketing solution, which includes award-winning website design, robust content management, customized landing pages, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing, and linking--all designed to drive bookings through a hotel's most profitable channel, its own website.

About TravelCLICK Inc. (www.travelclick.net)
TravelCLICK, the leader in hotel e-commerce solutions, provides a continuous flow of high-value online bookings to hotels and discount Mexico cruises worldwide. A uniquely comprehensive one-stop solution, TravelCLICK offers market intelligence, distribution, electronic marketing, and media solutions delivered with personal attention and local market expertise. With revenue optimization experts in every global market, we help our clients make better business decisions, generate greater demand from the right mix of channels, convert more shoppers to high-value guests, and increase revenue and profitability. Serving the hospitality industry since 1999, TravelCLICK has more than 13,000 customers in 140 countries with offices in Barcelona, Chicago, Dubai, Houston, Phoenix, Melbourne, Shanghai, and Tokyo.

Google To Tie Ads To Surfing Patterns
As Originally Posted to Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc will begin to aim online ads at people based on their Web browsing history, joining an industry trend that has raised privacy concerns even as it makes product pitches more effective.

The new program, dubbed "interest based" advertising, is being rolled out on a test basis across Google's network of partner websites and on its video-sharing site YouTube, according to an announcement on Google's blog on Wednesday.

The move comes a few weeks after the Web search leader's smaller rival, Yahoo Inc, unveiled its own advertising enhancements, which rely on an individual's online activity.

While behavioral ad techniques have been around for several years, some past efforts have raised privacy concerns, and Google has refrained from offering such advertising until now.

"Advertisers are under increasing pressure to be able to tie as much marketing spend as they can to direct sales revenue," said Andrew Frank, an analyst at market research firm Gartner.

Until now, the types of text and display ads that Google served to Web surfers were based solely on the content of the specific Web page being viewed by an individual.

With behavior advertising, Google and advertisers will be able to consider an individual's broader history of Web surfing when deciding which ads to pitch.

"If, for example, you love adventure travel and therefore visit adventure travel sites, Google could show you more ads for activities like hiking trips to Patagonia or African safaris," Google Vice President of Product Management Susan Wojcicki explained on Google's blog, adding that advertisers have been asking Google for such features for a long time.

Advertising based on consumer interest or behavior have the potential to increase consumer response and so-called click-through rates, which translates into higher ad revenue for the sites.

But U.S. lawmakers held hearings last year on behavioral advertising, after concerns arose when a company called NebuAd, in a deal with cable company Charter Communication, disclosed a pilot program to track customers.

Congressman Rick Boucher, head of the telecom subcommittee of the House of Representative's Energy and Commerce, has said the issue will be a top priority this year. The Virginia Democrat's office had no immediate comment on Google's plans.

MORE REGULATION?

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission recently expanded its voluntary guidance on how websites inform consumers that their data is being collected, to include mobile and Internet companies. Regulators have warned that failure to comply would lead to tougher regulation.

In announcing the initiative on Wednesday, Google said privacy issues were an important consideration. "This kind of tailored advertising does raise questions about user choice and privacy -- questions the whole online ad industry has a responsibility to answer," Wojcicki said in the blog post.

Google said it has three key safeguards: consumers can choose to opt out of the program; consumers can edit their profile of preferences based on online activity; and consumers can click on a button to learn how an ad was pitched to them.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said that regardless of Google's efforts to address privacy concerns, the company's new ad program "throws up red flags" for Internet privacy.

"This is the Internet's largest search company now profiling and tracking Internet users. That shouldn't happen," said Rotenberg. He said his organization was evaluating "possibilities" about a potential response to Google's move, but declined to specify what options were under consideration.

But Ari Schwartz, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said there are positives in Google's plan, including users getting access to their own profile.

"On balance it is a step in the right direction," said Schwartz, whose group was consulted while Google developed its plan. But he noted that Google plans to still rely on consumers opting out, rather than in, which most of the public opposes.

Google, the No.1 Internet search engine in the United States, generates 97 percent of its revenue from advertising. Much of that comes from text ads that appear alongside search results.

Google acquired DoubleClick for $3.2 billion in 2008 in order to beef up its position in the market for display ads.

Adopting behavioral ad techniques is "a logical way for Google to get better at the display game," said Emily Riley, a senior analyst at Forrester Research.

In particular, she said, the vast size of Google's AdSense network of partner Web sites and the company's technology could generate valuable data for marketers and advertisers.

"In theory they should have great scale with the behaviors they're tracking," said Riley.

Google Reports Weekend Privacy Breach
As Originally Posted at The Wall Street Journal

Google disclosed Saturday that it shared a very small number of online documents with users who weren’t authorized to see them.

The privacy glitch, caused by a software bug, affected just a tiny fraction of documents — an estimated less than .05% — wrote Jennifer Mazzon, Google Docs product manager, on a corporate blog. Google notified users affected by the bug on Friday and reversed the mistake, she said.

The bug hit users who changed their sharing settings on multiple presentations and documents at once, causing Google to share those documents with other users with whom the document owner had shared a document before, Ms. Mazzon wrote.

Though contained, the mistake underscores another pitfall of online software: the chance that someone may gain unintentional access to it.

By storing software online with Google and other providers – as opposed to keeping it downloaded to a single computer – multiple people can view and update a document at once. But the systems for managing those permissions can break down, causing documents to end up in the wrong hands. Proponents of online software also argue that the more traditional model of keeping software on a computer is prone to privacy problems as well. Someone could steal your computer, for instance.

Online software privacy breaches have been very rare. Outages or other reliability issues are slightly more common problems. (Google’s email service Gmail suffered one of those last month.)

Still, privacy problems are likely to be more damaging than the occasional blackout, especially for corporations that tightly manage their information and the government agencies Google is trying to court.

Google acknowledged the incident already caused them some pain of a different sort. “We understand our users’ concerns (in fact, we were affected by this bug ourselves),” wrote Ms. Mazzon in her post. “We’re treating this very seriously.”

Google Accounts for 72% of February Searches
As Originally Posted at CNN Money

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Google Inc. (GOOG) accounted for 72% of all Internet searches in the U.S. last month, according to data provider Hitwise.

Far behind was Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) at 17%, Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) MSN at 6% and IAC/InteractiveCorp.'s (IACI) Ask.com with 4%.

Hitwise, which sampled 10 million U.S. Internet users, has shown Google at the same level for the past few months. A year earlier, Google accounted for 66% of all U.S. searches. Meanwhile, the portion of searches on Yahoo, MSN and Ask fell 17%, 20% and 10%, respectively.

While Google apparently is maintaining its lead as a search engine, the company's advertising business appears to be under increasing pressure as fewer shoppers search for products online and advertisers spend less. Earlier this month, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said the economic situation is "pretty dire" and his company is "not immune" to current conditions.

Google's shares recently traded at $308.24, up 6%, amid a general market rally. The stock price has lost almost half its value since May.

The Hitwise figures also show search engines continue to be the main way Internet users navigate to industry categories. Comparing February numbers with a year earlier, business and finance, sports, online video and social-networking categories showed double-digit increases in the share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

In addition, the Hitwise survey shows the length of search queries has increased in the past year to more than eight words from an average of five.

Three More Criminal Charges For Governor Palin's Hacker
As Originally Posted at PC Mag

David Kernell is not having a good week.

The college student who is accused of hacking into the private Yahoo e-mail account of Alaska governor and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is now facing three additional charges.

Kernell, a 20-year-old student at the University of Tennessee and the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell, has already been charged with gaining unlawful access to stored communications and obtaining information from a protected computer via interstate communication – charges that could carry up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

A grand jury has now added wire fraud, identity theft, and obstruction of justice to the list, according to a March 6 filing. In addition, the count alleging unlawful access to a computer "has been significantly changed," though the filing did not go into detail.

Kernell's legal team intends to file a motion to dismiss the additional charges. As a result, the trial date has been pushed from May 19 until late September or early October.

Kernell turned himself into authorities on Oct. 8. He is accused of hacking into Palin's "gov.palin@yahoo.com" e-mail account on Sept. 16 by successfully navigating Yahoo's password recovery system.

OK. We Get It. Microsoft Wants a Search Deal With Yahoo.
As Originally Posted at ZD Net

Is it just me or does it feel like Microsoft is starting to sound - quite frankly - a bit desperate for a search deal with Yahoo?

The Times (UK) today blasted out the headline: Microsoft reopens door to deal with Yahoo!, citing an interview with Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner. But we already knew that Microsoft wanted a Yahoo deal. CEO Steve Ballmer said so in January, shortly after new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz came on board, and then again last month. Shortly after that, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell said that a search deal would be an “incredibly useful step” but was quick to note that a deal with Yahoo is not a panacea.

Are there any other Microsoft executives that need to say it? Actually, in all fairness, I realize this isn’t a case of Microsoft execs calling press conferences every month to say that they’re still interested in Yahoo. The media asks the question and then builds a headline around the answer.

Bartz, who has also been peppered with questions about a deal with Microsoft, has finally suggested that everyone just chill out and wait. In comments at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, Bartz said:

I said this to Mr. Ballmer, I will not negotiate with you and 30,000 of my closest friends. I will negotiate privately. If something happens, you will know about it then.

Bartz seems to have the upper-hand here. She’s still sorting through the mess at Yahoo. She’s still re-organizing management. She’s still evaluating the properties and priorities within the site. She knows Microsoft wants a deal - but, clearly, she’s not yet ready to talk publicly about any deal with Microsoft.

At the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference last month, CFO Blake Jorgensen (who announced his resignation the next day) said that the company “is not opposed to a deal that would maximize the value of the business, be it a partnership or sale in the long term” but was quick to point out that search is a complex business that connects - literally, on servers - with other elements of the business, such as Mail and Messenger. He said:

It’s difficult to draw a line down the middle of the organization and split it into two. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It could. But we’d want to do it right.

In the meantime, Microsoft is moving forward and has started internal testing of its new search product, codenamed Kumo.

Are Google's Prospects Threatened by Firefox?
As Originally Posted at The Wall Street Journal

It's no secret that Mozilla's Firefox Web browser is emerging as a potent competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. What may not be fully appreciated is the impact that Firefox could have on Web-browsing habits -- and the number of searches people perform.

The most recent version of Firefox, released last June, makes it much easier for Web surfers to return to a site they've previously visited. They won't need to know the site's address -- the browser's address bar offers what's essentially an automated bookmarks list. This is likely to reduce the number of searches per person over time.

The feature is likely to become standard. Microsoft is adding something similar in its upcoming version of Internet Explorer. Google isn't sitting still. Three months after the new Firefox version was released, Google came out with its Chrome browser, which also has a similar feature.

Search will remain a vibrant market. Firefox's new feature won't help someone searching for the first time. And the importance to ad revenues of people getting to sites they already know is unclear.

That said, anything that could undermine the number of searches each Web user has to perform only adds uncertainty to the category's growth prospects. For Google, the dominant player, the implications can't be good.

March Madness Sells Out Online


ADOTAS — The chance to get advertising in front of college basketball fanatics online has pulled in millions for CBS.

The network is nearly sold out of inventory and is approaching $30 million in ad revenue for its web video that allows fans to live stream the 60-plus tournament games it televises, with about two weeks to go before the start of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The revenue will definitely see an increase “well north of 20 percent more” than last year’s record $23 million, according to Mediaweek.

The quality of the inventory and size of the audience has combined with great search engine placement to make it an easy web buy for advertisers. AT&T, Coke and Pontiac are sponsors. A record 4.7 million unique viewers live streamed the games last year. CBS does not anticipate extended wait periods for users looking to access live games because of heavy demand this year.

For the at-work-slackers, there will be “boss button” - which enables viewers to display a fake spreadsheet on their screens with a click of the mouse.