Ben Charny

Its never too late for camp; not in Redmond, Wash., anyway. The start of fall marks the annual “MSN Search Champs Camp,” which software giant Microsoft Corp. holds for the purpose of investigating how it can better integrate Weblogs into Microsofts Internet search results. The event, held last week, gathers together Microsoft search honchos and […]

Search giant Google Inc. and U.S. cable operator Comcast Corp. are reportedly in negotiations to buy a small stake in America Online. In this potential deal, content is king. The possible investment is in Dulles, Va.-based AOLs free Web portal, the home of a number of the Internets more popular features, and not AOLs dwindling […]

There are fresh signs that Google is preparing an online payment service, code-named Google Wallet, that would compete with Internet stalwarts eBay and PayPal. GoogleRumors, a Web log (blog), recently reported that a computer file Google uses to scour the Internet to stock its Web site database now has a “purchases” category. Moreover, several other […]

BERKELEY, Calif.—Yahoo Inc. has opened a research facility a few miles north of here to collaborate with professors, graduate students and undergrads from the University of California, Berkeley. The research facility holds about 30 computer sciences graduate students and professors, all studying the social aspects of the digital age, using Yahoos audience of 400 million […]

A new Internet search engine, dubbed “Congoo,” gives people a free look at news articles that normally need a subscription to view. But when it launches in November, Congoo could be in for a year of searching dangerously. Someone using Congoo to search for, say, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, receives links to articles […]

MSN and Yahoo Messenger will be glued together, forming the worlds largest instant messaging community at some 275 million combined users, the services companies announced on Wednesday. In this era of IM viruses and concerns over privacy, both Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. pledged to keep consumer security and privacy first and foremost as they […]

Several new Internet search companies have chosen to specialize in a particular subject matter rather than go toe-to-toe with full-featured search giants like Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and MSN. The startups aim to prove a clever company can still find room in an industry despite the huge shadow cast by market giants Google, Yahoo, MSN […]

In a potential blow to Microsoft, Netscape Communications Netscape Internet browser will be included inside every new Hewlett-Packard and Compaq computer sold starting early next year, Netscape said last week. The arrangement allows for those buying new HP or Compaq consumer PCs to choose Netscape as their default Web browser and to start the Web […]

Online auctioneer eBay Inc. announced Monday that it plans to buy VeriSign Inc.s payment gateway business for $370 million, as it looks to further secure transactions by eBay users. A payment gateway is used to instantly authorize and manage online transactions. That division of VeriSign, an online security specialist based in Mountain View, Calif., took […]

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. […]