Since its launch nearly 20 years ago, America Online has remained the No. 1 Internet service provider largely by offering exclusive content to members only. But in a major strategy shift, the struggling Time Warner unit plans to publish a growing portion of its news, sports, music and other content on the open Internet, making it available to any online user, AOL executives say.

At first, people thought it was an April Fool's joke last week when Google, the search-engine leader, announced plans to offer a free Web-based e-mail service. One thing that made the plan seem unbelievable was the huge amount of free storage offered: a gigabyte, several hundred times more space than most Web-based e-mail services offer.

This chief of New York Times Digital once famously planned to spin off the online division and take it public. That didn't happen. But now that his operation is turning a tidy profit, Martin Nisenholtz is back to making declarations. In a recent keynote speech he said online journalism "needs a Pong" - a transformative application - and that blogs aren't it. Is he dismissing a threat to big media hegemony, or is he onto something? Wired inquired.

Internet service provider EarthLink Inc. on Thursday said it plans to sell sports programming online. Through a deal with Buffalo, New York-based technology company Synacor, EarthLink will start offering a subscription service for live game audio broadcasts and video clips from Major League Baseball, Nascar and the National Hockey League.

Yahoo on Wednesday dropped hints of growing interest in social networking services for search, coming after announcements of efforts from rivals Google and Microsoft.

A federal judge in New York has rejected requests from Google and Overture Services to throw out a lawsuit that claims the two search companies unlawfully sold advertising based on a pet store owner's registered trademark.

Microsoft and Time Warner have bought a majority stake in Contentguard, a U.S. firm that develops technologies for digital rights management, for an undisclosed amount.

News execs look to take advantage of the Net's increasing traffic.

Utah has become the first state to make spyware a crime, passing a law that makes it illegal to install such programs on a PC without approval. Starting in early May, violators face a fine of $10,000 per incident, under the new Spyware Control Act. The Utah law aims to regulate the use of spyware and other advertising software, which is infamous for annoying computer users by tracking and reporting their Web whereabouts and displaying ads.

Only a few years ago, online games still lurked on the fringe of American culture. One category catered to young males interested in wreaking havoc -- at others' expense. And then there were the complex, virtual communities that more closely mirror the real world in their social interactions. Today, those never-ending online "massively multiplayer" games like "EverQuest" have matured into mainstream, vibrant attractions, drawing hundreds of thousands of paying customers -- male and female.