Google is about to unveil its latest gift to the town it's slowly taking over: a municipal Wi-Fi network offering free Internet access to both residents and visitors to Mountain View, Calif. Google WiFi is about to go live--at considerable expense to the young company, which doesn't stand to make a dime from it. The San Jose Mercury News says the company "simply has more money than sense." Whatever its motivation, the Wi-Fi network is being paid for and maintained by Google as a gift to the city. The only thing you'll need to tap into Google's Mountain View network …

There have been a lot of stories in the impatient press about YouTube's inability to find a suitable business model. Themes range from "How are they going to monetize it" to "Is YouTube the new Napster?" to "There must be a video bubble." John C. Dvorak of MarketWatch wants everyone to calm down to take a second to appreciate that a site that's barely a year old now delivers roughly 100 million videos a day. Don't worry that the online video phenom has yet to find a way to make money: remember Google? The search engine came years before SEM. …

It will come as little surprise that MTV wants its crown back. For years, Viacom--with brands like MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon--completely ruled cool, yet suddenly it has been forced to take a back seat to sites like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. The media conglomerate fought back this past week with two potentially key new deals: a video distribution partnership with Google in which the companies share ad revenue in exchange for use of Google's publisher network, and then the acquisition of Atom Entertainment, a company that runs an online gaming portal. MTV Networks COO Michael Wolf says that …

Girls these days are constantly using their cell phones, texting or talking or surfing the Web on sites like MySpace, chatting on IM or surfing iTunes--and yet 12- to-14-year-old girls are still most deeply motivated by TV, says a new LA Times/Bloomberg poll that surveyed the habits of 12- to-24-year-old girls. Sixty-five percent say they're influenced by a TV show or network, and are more likely to multi-task, while 41 percent say there are still too few choices for entertainment. Because of their insatiable appetite for entertainment, Hollywood loves the better half of Gen Y--but they're an elusive bunch, with …

News Corp. said today that will begin selling its Twentieth Century Fox films and television shows across its Internet properties, according to the Financial Times. The service launches on News Corp.'s IGN--a media portal for young men--in October, and will extend to MySpace and others later. It charges $20 for new movies like "X-Men: The Last Stand," and $1.99 for TV series like "24." It will use Direct2Drive.com's download service, which enables users to transfer content to Windows Media-compatible portable devices--an alternative to Apple's products iPod, and iTunes. In recent months, Hollywood's largest studios have rushed to offer consumers the …

AOL's privacy breach last week was a big one that could have possibly disastrous legal implications, but the unveiling of very personal search data from over 600,000 of its users underscores how vast the data is that is collected from us by search and other companies each day. The question now following this latest public relations debacle from the Time Warner unit is--can we trust big companies holding such sensitive information? That search data, for example, is now accessible to anyone from identity thieves to jealous girlfriends to employers. Just last year, the government subpoenaed four search companies--Google, Yahoo, MSN, …

The cartoon accompanying this article from The Economist says it all: Google, having just announced two significant new conquests, now stands before the Web's middle powers (Yahoo, MSN, and eBay) like a colossal Napoleon, staring down at what looks to be three smallish rivals with a massive army behind it. In other words, the littler guys might consider banding together if putting a stop to Google's mounting power is on their list of things to accomplish someday. In fact, the article says Yahoo, MSN, and eBay are starting to look a lot like Russia, Prussia, and Austria in the …

Forbes informs us that Google threw a party at its Mountain View, Calif. palace on Tuesday, aptly calling it "The Google Dance." As cute as that sounds, and as much fun as drinking, dancing and karaoke-ing the night away with Google folk might be, we didn't go (they invited us, of course). Turns out it was a rough next day anyway, particularly for CEO Eric Schmidt, who wasn't in nearly as good a mood speaking at the Search Engine Strategies conference. Hangover and such, right? Or maybe it was just the barrage of questions about click fraud (or maybe both)? …

Online gamblers are wondering whether they'll get their money back after a judge's temporary restraining order forced BetOnSports PLC to disable its Web site. Players now have no access to their accounts, some of which have thousands of dollars. Said one New Jersey gambler: "I just can't get past how much I could lose." The online wagering company is faced with a 22-count indictment on fraud and racketeering charges The company's former CEO remains in prison in the U.S. after being arrested while changing planes in Dallas. U.S. prosecutors want a forfeiture of $4.5 billion from David Carruthers, the firm's …

How about that movie industry? Often accused of being anti-consumer when it comes to digital media, the movie biz is actually planning to relax the rules on copying DVDs. Legally downloaded digital movies, which are offered by companies like CinemaNow and Movielink, have completely failed to catch on with the general public. The biggest complaint, perhaps, is that downloaded movies are prevented from being copied to disc to be watched on TV sets. Consumers like their big TVs and massive sound systems; they don't want to have to watch movies on their laptops. Hollywood never allowed the copying of DVDs …