Ben Charny

To improve the audience of Microsofts Internet search engine, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates suggests using cash and various freebees as a lure. A Microsoft spokesperson adds that its a possible service, but that Microsoft has no plans to introduce it. When a startup like Newsvine Inc., an online distributor of user-generated news, offers outright bribery […]

Publishing giant HarperCollins plans to keep its books under digital lock and key to defend against a growing threat from Internet search engines book search features. By doing so, the publisher can stop unwanted online interests “from just grabbing our books and sending them all over the Internet,” said HarperCollins Group Vice President Brian Murray. […]

Internet search giant Google Inc. has unveiled a new feature for planning trips via public transit, which some see as yet another clue of Googles intent to take on online travel giants like Mapquest.com Inc. or Expedia Inc. Google Transit, available by pointing a Web browser to www.google.com/transit, was launched quietly Wednesday night. For now, […]

The University of Chicago Press recently shut down certain facets of its online book project, seeing no need now that Internet search giants include the content of books in their search results. Its a relatively insignificant move for the universitys Bibliovault; the 5-year-old project is still functioning as a wholesaler for university presses. But taken […]

CHICAGO—Finding out that virtually everyone is using their product usually scares the stuffing out of most industries. At worst, the dreaded “s” word—saturation—can trigger cataclysmic shifts in the business world because theres simply no new customers to gain. One glaring recent example is the U.S. cell phone industry, which went through a spasm of consolidation […]

CHICAGO –At the most, there was maybe 10 feet separating executives from the worlds three leading Internet search engines as each shared the same stage here at an Internet search conference. But as each exec spoke of their companys respective online book projects, they put on display the huge divide that separates Google Inc. from […]

CHICAGO—Imagine if librarians organized book collections based on a 14-word description of each title. The results, no doubt, would leave much room for improvement. Thats loosely the case for the growing number of features for finding Podcasts, which are very much in the vein of radio shows, but are downloaded any time from the Internet. […]

Robert James Petrick, 51, didnt exactly point a Web browser to the Internet search engine Google and type in “how do you kill your wife?” But he came pretty close, say prosecutors in Durham County, North Carolina. Petrick used Google to search the Internet for references to “body decomposition,” “rigor mortis,” “neck” and “break” in […]

America Online Inc. on Thursday released an updated version of its Internet search engine for cell phones. Improvements are mainly to the Web browsing capabilities. Thanks to technology from Israel-based InfoGin Ltd., Web pages automatically adapt for viewing on the phones small screen. /zimages/2/28571.gifClick here to read more about the convergence of Internet search and […]

The company distributing many of the worlds Internet addresses is taking more steps this week to fend off criticism that it gives the U.S. government too much control over its operations. But it remains to be seen if critics will be mollified by the initiatives coming from this weeks meetings of ICANN (the International Corporation […]