eBay, like Yahoo, has thrown in the towel on its operations in China. The online auctioneer is shutting down its main Web site and choosing instead to partner with Chinese company Tom Online Inc., which will run the joint venture overseas. eBay is committing $40 million to the unnamed venture, while Tom Online will contribute $20 million. Despite putting up more money, eBay's taking a 49% minority stake in the partnership. Silicon Valley companies have struggled mightily in China. Google, the world's largest search engine, is a distant No. 2 in Web search, despite opening new operations in …

Startup Aims to Improve Image Search The quest for the perfect image search has thus far eluded the likes of Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, and MSN. As it focus on the lucrative business of helping users find specific information, firms like Sweden-based startup Polar Rose are free to focus solely on image search technology. Unlike Google et al, Polar Rose uses 3D mapping techniques to recognize facial patterns. The others search for text tags associated with photos--so a search for Britney Spears, for example, could return a photo of someone posing like Britney Spears. Polar Rose's technology, …

The Wall Street Journal predicts that Google's unstoppable earnings engine may soon hit a stop. But not because of its advertising system--that's still unstoppable; rather, the company's interest income, which is the money Google makes from investing its nearly $10 billion in cash in government securities and other assets that bear interest, isn't likely to grow as much as last year. Savvy investments years ago in Internet startups like the Chinese search engine Baidu.com, which later became a billion-dollar company itself--as well as a second stock offering in April--have raised billions for the search giant. This isn't to …

Time magazine's naming of the collective "You" as Person of the Year is drawing ire from all kinds of sources. Some of the most biting satire regarding the magazine's choice has come from the leftist politico-blog The Huffington Post. As revolutionary a media-phenomenon as user-generated content and video has been this year, columnists at The Post and other news publications complain that the world's many problems (and those addressing them) deserve far more attention than, well, us. Time magazine's almost condescending point, writes Nora Ephron of The Huff Post, is--more or less--marked by the phrase "working for nothing," …

So-called citizen journalism--when you, the common man with a separate day job, takes the initiative to report a breaking story as it happens--is becoming a nice way to earn some extra cash. The Washington Post tells the story of one man who was able to snap timely photos of the New York City plane crash involving Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor. He later sold his photos to several British newspapers through the British amateur photo site Scoopt, earning $650 for his work. The rise of digital technology and the ease with which we can capture …

In today's new media world, Craigslist President and Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster sounds nuts, writes Louis Hau of Forbes.com. With a massive user base (47th on the Web) that brims with monetization opportunities (including advertising), he and other members of the Craigslist board have no intention of making any more money. Yep, they're from Northern California. Thus, Buckmaster's appearance at the UBS Global Media & Communications Conference last week wasn't met with derision so much us bewilderment. First of all, what's a guy who represents a company that doesn't care about making more money doing at a media …

If there's one group online retailers have never been able to snag during the lucrative Christmas shopping period, it's procrastinators. This year, Internet merchants are upping their shipping acumen and doing their utmost to process orders as close as they possibly can to Dec. 25. However, the closest most can get--in terms of standard shipping, anyway--is today and tomorrow. A poll from E.W. Scripps' BizRate, says that 30 of 76 retailers polled would guarantee standard shipping by either today or tomorrow--double the number from last year--and there are fewer business days between the 19th and the 25th this year …

Don't discount the value of word of mouth marketing: Brand advocates may be your best marketing resource. There exists a relationship between brand fans, search and social media, according to research from Yahoo and comScore. Their research says brand influencers conduct about 25% more online searches; they are 119% more likely to use instant messenger; 40% more likely to listen to podcasts; they have wider social circles and nearly half have written about their purchases online. They're also more than twice as likely to lead to sales. "Search is built on forums," says Alan Boughen, senior partner and …

It's a bitterly fought race at the top, or is it? News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media, thanks to social-networking sensation MySpace, claimed top spot in Web-wide page views last month, with 38.7 billion page views to Yahoo's 38.1 billion, according to comScore Networks. Yahoo has been the longtime leader on the Web so, naturally, these results were immediately called into question. UBS analyst Ben Schachter later warned reporters and investors that this is potentially unreliable data. Nielsen/NetRatings' data still has Yahoo on top, with 33.4 billion versus FIM's 29. This debate might strike advertisers as a little ridiculous. …

Is iTunes in trouble or not? Earlier this week, Forrester Research estimated that song sales for Apple's Music Store had fallen 65% in the first half of the year. Apple later denied those reports, citing strong global sales growth, though it didn't offer comparison data. Later, the Forrester analyst who wrote the report reneged, saying the sample size was too small. Yesterday, both comScore Media Metrix and Nielsen NetRatings released data. The former saying sales were up 84% and the later claiming an 85% rise in visitors last month, versus a year ago. So it looks like …