Google, the Web's No. 1 search engine, expects to close bidder registration for its auction-style initial public offering at 5 p.m. EDT on Aug. 12, the company said on Tuesday.

ValueClick Inc., a provider of technology used to manage online advertising, said Tuesday that it completed the acquisition of privately-held Pricerunner AB, a provider of online comparison shopping services in Europe, and raised revenue guidance for the third quarter and full year.

Long buried in the ashes of a bygone era, online soap opera "The Spot" has miraculously found a second life.

Several smaller banner ad networks have been used to inject malicious code into Web sites, according to research and analysis firm Netcraft (netcraft.com). In each of the cases, code for the banners serve as the trigger for a string of exploit scripts that trick Internet Explorer into downloading malware or spyware.

Although search engines have greatly enhanced access to information, and storage technology has made it cheap to digitize nearly everything, search tools need to be refined to make it easier to digest information or conduct queries. That was the word from researchers and speakers at the New Paradigms for Using Computers Conference, held at IBM's Almaden research lab here last week.

Google's self proclaimed mission to make the world's information accessible is being questioned by some of its customers. The search engine bars advertisers from pitching a range of opinions and products on its Web site and on those of its partners.

An operation that used a feature called the "Windows Messenger Service," which is part of the Microsoft Windows operating system, to barrage consumers' computers with pop-up ads for the pop-up blocking software they sold has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that their marketing methods violated federal laws.

A new Internet advertising forecast shows slower growth for paid search listings in the next five years, a projection that raises questions about Web search leader Google Inc.'s prospects as it goes public.

After a recent legal setback, a California company that claims its patents cover the streaming video technology used by adult Web sites is boosting efforts to collect money from a very different group of streaming video users: colleges and universities.

In an answer to liberal activists' online successes with fund raising and rabble rousing, Michael Krempasky and fellow conservative blogger Ben Domenech decided to fight liberals with one of their own innovations: a right-leaning activist site.