Media - Internet

At some point in the future, logging on to either MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger will enable a user to engage in IM sessions with registered users of both communities. Beta testing will commence later this year, with full rollout scheduled for late spring 2006. MSN and Yahoo claim a combined registered user base in excess of 275 million worldwide. The walls between the global 'big four' IM...

AS MORE and more of the world's business is conducted online, a battle royal is taking shape. The struggle is to decide which company will become the primary gateway to the internet. Three firms, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!, are aiming to establish the world's leading internet portal–the site that most internet users rely on for everything from searching the web to sending e-mail and catching up...

MEDIA CONGLOMERATES AND smaller, traditional publishers, in a bid to counter the ascendancy of online advertising champs Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG), are snapping up online properties with abandon. The list of recent acquisitions spools out at a giddy pace: News Corp. (NWS) shelled out $1.2 billion in July for several Internet companies including Intermix Media, the proprietor of hip social...

Google.com, world's largest Internet search engine, deleted the words "Taiwan, a province of the People's Republic of China" on a map of Taiwan linked to its maps search engine maps.google.com. This has drawn rage from Chinese officials and the people. News reports indicate Google made the changes under pressure of extremists in Taiwan's pan-Green camp (a pro-independence alliance between the...

Earlier this year, Wall Street analysts were ready to write obituaries for America Online Inc., which was losing dial-up Internet subscribers at a rate of 2 million per year. Now the Dulles-based service is suddenly at the heart of a bidding war among Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. because it has something they all want: Eyeballs. AOL is still losing subscribers, but it has radically...

After Google Print stumbled over a writers' block, it is now the turn of Google Earth to run into rough weather. Indian President APJ. Abdul Kalam has expressed concern about the free mapping program from Google, warning that it could help terrorists by providing satellite photos of potential targets. RASHTRAPATI BHAWAN: All are welcome. The Google site contains clear aerial photos of Parliament...

I THOUGHT IT WAS only in fairy tales that Cinderella married a prince, but now handsome suitors are lining up to court the once-derided, much-maligned AOL. Who would have guessed? AOL's very name was such an embarrassment that it was ignominiously stripped from the media and entertainment entity it helped create, AOL Time Warner. Now the dowdy dial-up Internet service, long overshadowed by the...

Blogs will play an important role in the future of advertising, entrepreneurs said Tuesday, but for now the bulk of ad dollars from these web journals still appears to be flowing to search engine Google. Venture capitalists and Internet executives gathered at the ThinkEquity technology and investor conference in Half Moon Bay, California, are looking for ways to make money on the trend of consumer...

AMERICA ONLINE HAS HIRED BLOG monitoring firm Intelliseek to provide it with buzz-tracking data, including information on the blogosphere's most popular posts and news stories, the companies announced Monday. The arrangement also gives AOL the ability to syndicate BlogPulse's two blogs--BlogPulse Newswire, which summarizes daily blog activity, and BlogPulse Spotlight, which focuses on...

PALO ALTO, Calif. -(Dow Jones)- Google Inc. (GOOG) would support basic free municipal Internet access in San Francisco with advertising, and may offer a paid higher speed tier of services to residents for a fee, according to a proposal for the project. Meanwhile, Earthlink Inc. (ELNK) will partner with Motorola Inc. (MOT) and Tropos Networks to provide a paid wireless access similar to the service...