Like many companies--Yahoo and Amazon come to mind--eBay once viewed Google as a partner. Now, the online auctioneer is viewing the search giant as one of its biggest threats. To say the least, the relationship between the companies has grown strained, says The San Jose Mercury News. Not only does Google's search engine direct users to e-commerce sites other than eBay, the search giant has now has its own competing ecommerce services, Froogle and Google Base. Recently, Google announced it would let users set up an account from which they can purchase items on Google's sites, taking aim at …

Inter-Web company competition is all over the news today. According to TechCrunch, a popular Internet media blog, Yahoo Tech, the Web portal's new tech info site for dummies, is taking aim at CNET, the massively popular news and product review destination for Internet professionals. TechCrunch says Yahoo Tech's reviews section, which gleans info from Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Answers, in-house experts, and third parties like Consumer Reports, would compete most directly with CNET's reviews. That said, if Yahoo Tech really is for newbies, and an early-days perusal of the site would support that, CNET can breathe a sigh of relief, because …

Ad:Tech, our industry's beloved all-day, all-night schmooze-fest, keeps growing in size while getting more upbeat every year. Red Herring reports that registration doubled, free drinks, candy, and office items were abundant, and there were more scantily clad girls than ever handing out fliers and coupons from companies you've never heard of. This year the event's keynote, venture capital partner firm Sequoia Capital, which pumps money into YouTube and other promising Web newcomers, pointed out that if just 20 percent of U.S. retail moved to the Web (which it undoubtedly will as broadband penetration increases),  e-commerce would be worth $1.2 …

In the wake of all the bad press surrounding spyware and peer-to-peer networks like Grokster and eDonkey, you'd be forgiven for thinking file-sharing is illegal. It's not, but it's definitely got a bad rep. Business 2.0 tells us about three new startups looking to turn that around. Their goal: supplant e-mail as the medium of choice for sharing large files like photos and videos. It's a timely, smart endeavor, especially as digital devices up photo and video resolution, leading to ever-larger sizes. To keep their systems from clogging, files that are too large are often blocked by major service …

I don't watch "Lost," ABC's award-winning TV show that millions tune in to watch every week, but I do know, through others, how ridiculously addictive it is. I've had a many a dinner plan canceled on account of people forgetting about new episodes, etc., and I've come to accept the "'Lost' excuse." Anyway, next week, when a new slate of episodes return to ABC, fans will also be able to get "Lost" online, as Disney prepares a new "Lost Experience" on the Web. Of course, ABC executives are keeping mum about what exactly the "Lost Experience" entails, but that's just …

Congress may start forcing Internet service providers to retain records of users' activities, CNET reports. All ISPs retain user data, but many delete it over a period of time. A Congressional Internet Caucus is now preparing to introduce an amendment that would make such deletion illegal. Companies like MySpace might benefit from such a law--and indirectly, advertisers--because ISP user data would make it easier to keep sex offenders off their site. According to the proposed amendment, all user records would have to be retained up to one year after an account is closed. It's not clear from the article whether …

Business 2.0 discusses the emergence of video blogs, or vlogs, an emerging ad-based business. Rocketboom is the most popular of this new cross between broadband video content and a blog, a satirical news show with next to no budget. Nevertheless, its first string of ads are commanding $40K for the right to reach its 250,000 daily users–a number that's apparently growing fast. Video blogging is a tiny, tiny market: as of March, there were about 6-7,000 total vlog sites, compared to millions and millions of blogs. Vlogs could be attractive to advertisers for a few reasons: one, they run …

What About AdSense For Broadband Video? The good news is that forcing users to watch your video ad before viewing broadband content hasn't turned out to be AS annoying to them as you might have thought. Great, but the next step is getting them interested in what you have to say and perhaps even getting them to interact with your ad. Best way to do that is to present them with something relevant. As any interactive marketer knows, one of the best ways to be relevant is to show an ad that's related to the content on the page. Sean …