Google's plan to offer free Web-based e-mail has raised worries among privacy advocates that the service could make it easier for law enforcement to conduct surveillance of its users.

Web search provider Google Inc. said on Thursday it is adjusting prices for some advertisements that Goggle places on its partners' web pages, a move that could lower costs for some advertisers.

Internet advertising looks like it will continue its recovery this year. And that's good news for Yahoo! The Internet bellwether, slated to report first-quarter results next Wednesday, started this week with a buy rating from American Technology Research, which cited a bullish outlook for Internet advertising, among other factors.

Got pop-ups? That might be the question asked by users of Google's proposed e-mail service. Eyeing the territory jealousy held by Yahoo! and Bill Gates' Microsoft , Google is introducing a free e-mail service, promising 250 to 500 times more storage space than the market-dominating services of Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail. Too good to be true? Well, the bargain has a hook:

I have a confession to make: I'm addicted to instant messaging (IM). Fortunately, I'm not alone. Industry researcher International Data Corp. estimates that of 188 million global users of IM last year, 22 million were business users. Those numbers are expected to rise to 205 million and 37 million this year.

Havas, the French advertising conglomerate, plans today to announce a marketing services network called Euro RSCG 4D. Havas hopes Euro RSCG 4D will simplify its business for clients by linking a wide array of agencies and services that fall outside the realm of traditional advertising.

Economists have a new crystal ball to consult for clues about the job market's direction. After six months of testing, Monster Worldwide, the corporate parent of the careers Web site Monster.com, will publish today its first monthly Monster employment index of online demand for workers. The indicator is compiled from data on more than 1,500 Internet job boards, including Monster's, and corporate-career Web sites.

Although new cell phone models increasingly come with cameras attached, wireless companies with huge investments in new high-speed networks and fancy phones fear people won't find a corresponding new need to take pictures and send them--for a fee--over the wireless Internet.

In the world that Microsoft sees on the horizon, any device running its operating systems can be used for voice as well as data communication. As part of that vision, Microsoft announced today that the next generation of its Windows CE platform, version 5.0, contains VoIP features which can be used on things like WLAN phones, set-top boxes and residential gateways.

Kinja.com could help make sense of the blogosphere. The man who gave the world commercial Weblogs including Gawker and Wonkette is now offering digests of blogs covering 14 subjects including baseball, sex, and politics. Subscribers to Nick Denton's Kinja.com can enter the addresses of blogs they read and also receive digest excerpts. Sample digests say each "contains the newest writing from web logs picked by editors at Kinja."