Miva Inc., the media company formerly known as FindWhat.com, has hired an investment firm to help it explore new options aimed at boosting its value for shareholders. The company will pursue various strategies--including a possible sale, which has been widely speculated in the last several months. Other possibilities include selling securities, assets, recapitalizing, or making acquisitions. Miva was one of the early successful adopters of pay-per-click Web advertising, but last August the company had to pay Yahoo! subsidiary Overture Services $8 million for using technology it had patented. Miva's estimated public value is just above $170 million.

This summer the popular economics journal The Economist declared that the rise of voice over Internet protocol -- underscored by the eBay-Skype deal -- signaled the end of the telephony business. A few months later, phone makers like Panasonic, Motorola Inc. and Uniden America are creating new phones with built-in adapters preset to connect to Internet calling services like Skype and Vonage. These cordless phones communicate with a base station that plugs into either an Internet enabled computer or modem. Newer devices will be able to seamlessly connect to home broadband connections, cellular networks, or wireless networks at Internet cafes …

It has now become no secret that Internet companies wishing to do business in China must take exception to the wishes of the Chinese government. Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and now Skype have all had to filter out phrases like "Falun Gong" "Dalai Lama" and qualify others like "freedom" and "democracy." As a Business Week article reveals, American Internet users know very little about the size and scope of Chinese censorship, and the extent to which multinationals themselves censor their own content, knowingly. Beijing employs more than 30,000 pairs of eyeballs to look out for content that ought to be censored. …

A lot was said at this year's CES about media companies' great hope for seamless digital convergence: wireless Internet connectivity linking every device imaginable to a central network hub in the home. As USA Today's Kevin Maney notes, while this vision was repeated ad infinitum, little evidence of such connectivity exists today, and it doesn't even seem likely this "seamless nirvana" will be in evidence by next year's show either. Contrary to the prevailing dream, you cannot plug your TV into the Internet, make VoIP phone calls on your cell phone via a Wi-Fi network -- heck, you can't even …

Judging from this year's CES, it looks as though the Internet's first big battle between major media companies will be over broadband content. Indeed, Google, Yahoo!, AOL, Apple, MSN and a few new players have all entered the fray over for-pay broadband TV and video. As the Hollywood Reporter's Diane Mermigas points out, a proliferation of broadband content on new media devices means Google's search services will be needed more than ever. Having said that, several reports have noted with disappointment the half-baked state of Google's video search technology, which leaves the door open a crack for other providers. Mermigas …

Despite all the post-CES hoopla surrounding the prospect of broadband video stores and search services, no one is sure what consumers will respond to or how soon. Web evangelists have been parading around promises of "anywhere, anytime" entertainment since well before the dotcom bust, and though the technology may be ready, broadband providers don't appear to be, which means consumers probably won't be either. Currently, there's not much to the video databases provided by Google, Yahoo!, et al, and the business strategies sound a bit cumbersome--especially if users have to sift among five different sets of subscription fees and user …

Henry Blodgett, an analyst and scapegoat of the dotcom bust, (ironically) writes a bearish piece on his blog about click fraud, Google's deep dark secret, and how exposure of just how big a problem it is could send its inflatable stock price plummeting. Blodgett points out that while Google has lots of fun, free products, it has only one source of meaningful revenue: AdWords. Being so heavily dependent on one product will hurt should something bad happen to AdWords. Enter click fraud, the process of deploying programs illegally to click on ads in order to drive up competitors' costs or, …

Google may be bowing to the pressure being placed on it by book publishers and authors, according to a BBC News report from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Instead of enduring another court battle, Google may set up an online book store for those titles under copyright. Company CEO Eric Schmidt said a store is something Google is pondering, but was clear to add that a move would be subject to the permission of copyright holders. The search giant has been scanning thousands of volumes for its new Google Book Search, but ran into opposition from copyright holders …

Marketwatch's Bambi Francisco reacts to the unveiling of Google Video at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Google will monetize the service by letting consumers access user-generated content for 5 cents or more per download, but will let big-time content makers name their model for access to their content. While Francisco likes the innovative business model, she says Google Video's technology and content partnerships leave a lot to be desired thus far. Truveo.com, a video search startup, provided far more relevant results after Francisco typed in the term "CES." Despite the early search relevance problems, Francisco warns that Google …

A recent survey covering the cost of buying keywords for search engine marketing says that while the average cost rose last year, improvements in return on investment could justify larger marketing spends this year. According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization survey, "The State of Search Engine Marketing 2005," 32 percent of agencies surveyed estimated that prices for keywords they commonly buy rose 20 percent last year. The next most common responses were that prices surged by 10 percent and 30 percent, each voted by 25 percent of the ad agencies surveyed. Despite last year's increases, most said they …