The growing number of new interactive marketing techniques aimed at children poses "significant risks" to those youth, a public interest group charged in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission today.

Google Inc. will have to create a new verb for wireless Web searching if it is to keep its role as the Internet trendsetter. Google, a search engine so widely used on personal computers that its name became a verb, has a chance to trounce rivals by making Web searching more practical on gadgets like mobile phones, analysts say.

While nearly half of all Web search engine users prefer industry leader Google Inc. over its rivals, the soon-to-be public company faces challenges as it expands into new businesses, Standard & Poor's Equity Research Services said on Monday.

Companies that want to send millions of junk messages to Vodafone customers could soon have to pay for each one.

The owner of an online forum won the first round of a worldwide search-engine optimization competition Monday, by using a backlinking strategy that scored his site as the top Google result for a made-up term, "nigritude ultramarine."

Several Web publishers, including About.com and iFilm.com, have started testing new video advertising technology from Eyeblaster, in a sign of further momentum for online commercials.

AirAmerica, the newly launched radio network aimed at liberal listeners who prefer Al Franken's smirk to Rush Limbaugh's snarl, had a rough start this spring. In its first month of operation, the network saw top executives leave, had trouble meeting payroll and struggled to make its signal heard from a mere six radio stations.

Several Internet advertisers have been hit with lawsuits over their use of desktop software applications serving their ads in a new tactic to fight the spread of advertising through desktop software programs.

Top online search engines are being accused of favoritism for allowing ads for discount Canadian prescription drugs but barring ads for pain and sex drugs.

New Internet services offered by wireless telecom firms now give customers a means to use their laptops almost anyplace, along with their cellphones. And the technology is altering the way people do business.