Yahoo to charge businesses for additional listings
By Compiled from staff and wire reports
Published March 8, 2004
Internet giant Yahoo Inc. is adopting a new system for indexing Web pages that will charge businesses to include more material not being listed in its online search engine, marking the first volley in a duel with its former ally Google Inc.
Yahoo is touting the approach as a practical way to assure its search engine captures more of the so-called "Deep Web" - the billions of pages that aren't found during periodic crawls of the Internet.
The method, often called "paid inclusion," also will help Yahoo's search engine keep better tabs on the most current material on a Web page, company officials said.
More than 99 percent of Yahoo's search index will consist of Web links that don't pay fees, said Tim Cadogan, the company's vice president of search.
Search engine analysts generally applauded Yahoo's move, saying it could open a rich new vein of content that's lacking from Internet search engines.
But the fees required to participate in the program are likely to raise worries about Yahoo creating an online caste system dividing the haves and have-nots of the Internet.
To ease those concerns, Yahoo isn't charging nonprofit Web sites to add unlisted links to its search engine. The nonprofit sites initially participating in the new indexing system include National Public Radio and the Library of Congress.
While Yahoo's index will continue to include Web sites that don't pay the fees, there's no guarantee on how frequently those destinations will be visited or how extensively the content will be analyzed, Cadogan said.
The fees won't buy Web sites a higher ranking in Yahoo's noncommercial search results, Cadogan said.
The fees under Yahoo's Content Acquisition Program will be based on the size of the participating Web sites, how many unlisted links are submitted and how frequently the links are clicked on by the users of Yahoo's search engine.
Yahoo is counting on the program to give it an advantage over Google as it vies to supplant its rival as the Web's most popular search engine.
TiVo boosts hard drive size in latest model
TiVo fanatics can stay glued to the tube for even longer stretches with the company's new 140-hour Series2 digital video recorder, which has a much roomier hard drive than previous models.
Although fearless do-it-yourselfers have been cracking open their TiVos and installing larger hard drives for some time, the new model is the largest off-the-shelf unit available from the company.
Digital video recorders have been edging onto the VCR's turf as a way to record and shift the timing of television programming, and they can even pause and rewind live shows.
Although TiVo has competition from ReplayTV as well as cable television providers such as Bright House Networks who offer their own digital recorders, TiVo's friendly software has developed a following because it simplifies tasks like recording every show featuring a favorite actor, skipping through commercials and programming the machine to record the entire season of a series with one click of the remote control.
The price tag on the 140-hour Series2 is $399, but a $50 mail-in rebate brings the price down to $349. The unit can be purchased at www.tivo.com and soon will be available from major electronics retailers.
Viewers who are not quite ready for that much TV can benefit from recent price reductions on smaller TiVo boxes: The 40-hour model, previously $249, has a suggested price of $199 ($149 after the $50 rebate), and the 80-hour unit, previously $349, will cost $299 ($249 after the rebate). Rebates on all models are available until the end of May.
The monthly TiVo service for updated TV listings is sold separately: You can pay a one-time fee of $299 for the life of the unit or a monthly charge of $13.
Online advertising on rebound
Online advertising rebounded in 2003, according to a new industry report, which cites growth in ad spending by Fortune 500 companies and growing market share for animated advertising for which marketers pay a premium.
The report also cites data released in mid February by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers estimating that online advertising revenue in the United States increased 20 percent in 2003, to $7.2-billion. In the fourth quarter alone, online ad spending was $2.2-billion, a 38 percent increase over the same quarter a year earlier.
Nielsen/NetRatings, an Internet audience measurement company, collaborated on the report with DoubleClick, a New York company that provides online advertising technology to publishers and marketers.
StealthSurfer keeps Web activity private
A new thumb-size USB drive from a company called StealthSurfer aims to guard your privacy by keeping the records of your Web activity close to the vest. When you plug in the StealthSurfer and use its customized version of the Netscape browser, the device stores the cookies, URL history, cache files and other traces of your Web browsing that ordinarily would accumulate on your computer's hard drive. When you're done surfing, you unplug the drive and take the records of your travels with you.
StealthSurfer's name is a bit of an overstatement. It does keep your Web-hopping and file-sharing activities away from prying eyes after the fact. But since it uses your computer's Internet connection, the Web sites you visit still can track your Internet protocol address as you move around online.
The StealthSurfer comes in four capacities, ranging from 64 megabytes $70 to 512 megabytes ($299). You may experience a slight reduction in performance when you use the device because its flash memory writes data at slower speeds than a hard drive does. On the other hand, installation is a breeze. Computers running Windows Me, 2000 and XP recognize the StealthSurfer as a drive when it is plugged in. (If you're running Windows 98, you must download a driver from www.stealthsurfer.biz.) For an additional layer of privacy, Windows users can select a password to protect the drive's files.
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