Google, Internet | featured news

Google alleges Microsoft uses its web browser and Bing Search bar to harvest information on Google users.

Yahoo Inc's quarterly net revenue slid 4 percent and it forecast a further slide this quarter as it struggles to revive growth in the face of intense competition from Google and Facebook.

Google Inc co-founder Larry Page will take over as CEO from Eric Schmidt, a surprise that signaled Silicon Valley's most powerful Internet company was taking the offensive against fast-moving rivals like Facebook.

A strong holiday shopping season will help Google Inc beat Wall Street's quarterly targets again, but investors may need more convincing to buy into the Internet giant's longer-term future.

This may go down as the year that social networking trumped searching as America's favorite online pastime. In 2010, Facebook pushed past Google to become the most popular site on the Internet for the first time, according to two Web tracking firms. The title caps a year of rapid ascent for Facebook in which the social network hit 500 million users and founder Mark Zuckerberg was named Time magazine's Person of the Year. It also marks another milestone in the ongoing shift in the way Americans spend their time online, a social change that profoundly alters how people get news and interact with one another - and even the definition of the word "friend."

Federal regulators are poised to enact controversial new rules affecting Internet access, marking the government's strongest move yet to ensure that Facebook updates, Google searches and Skype calls reach consumers' homes unimpeded.

Akamai’s real-time ad targeting solution could well be an important growth driver in the future for the company given the growing importance of behavioral targeting technology in the context of web advertisement. Companies such as Amazon and Google currently use similar technologies to identify user behavior and then offer suggestions or products that might interest users.

The tech giant's become a puzzle to regulators as it expands its ecosystem - a spread that includes e-mail, a digital bookstore and cell phone software.

Google on Thursday released its yearly Zeitgeist report, which showcases the top search terms of 2010.

The Google eBookstore may be a boon to independent bookstores that have signed on to sell e-books on their Web sites through Google.