It's something Microsoft started discussing about a year and a half ago that never quite came to fruition: compensating users with coupons, prizes and money for using Windows Live Search. That idea has now resurfaced, but the focus has shifted to large enterprises. According to the so-called "Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search" PowerPoint presentation: "Your organization can earn credits for Microsoft Web searches and redeem them for Microsoft or preferred partner deployment and training services." Right, so what's the value? Well, if you're a company with more than 75,000 employees, the benefit is not insubstantial: your company could …

There's no doubt Google is a big, growing company, but Steve Ballmer, CEO of its older rival Microsoft, questions the wisdom of growing the company so fast. They are trying to double in a year. That's insane in my opinion," he says. Ballmer praised the more traditional growth and management structure created by Microsoft, adding that he isn't sure the search giant has proven "that a random collection of people doing their own thing" drives efficiency and innovation. Google is famous of for letting its engineers devote 20% of their time to side projects. As ever, Ballmer …

With a little help from its friend, Internet radio is fighting back against the Copyright Royalty Board's decision to implement a harsh new fee structure. Luckily, Webcasters have National Public Radio on its side. On Friday, public radio officials will file a petition to get the CRB to reconsider. If that fails, NPR has vowed to bring legal action against the oversight body, which was created by Congress to settle royalty disputes in the music business. An NPR spokeswoman called the ruling a "stunning, damaging decision for public radio" that could cost as much as 20 to 30 times …

A man's Web connection has been breaking down. He reboots. He checks the modem. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. While he's tinkering, his wife answers a phone call. An unfamiliar voice asks, "Are you home?" She answers "yes," and the line goes dead. Minutes later, government agents storm the house. They take the man, his computers and disks away, telling his wife to keep quiet on the way out. This is China, where the Internet police are no joke. The above actually happened to Wang Xiaoning and his wife Yu Ling in Beijing in 2002. Wang was a …

If Apple's iTV service takes off like its iPod portable media player, then television staples like the 30-second spot will soon be dead. Apple's new device is scheduled to ship this week, although the Apple camp has kept mum so far.b The possibility of its success will make TV advertisers nervous, because consumers will now be able to watch their iTunes TV shows and movies on television screens. The company's wide-ranging agreements with media companies to sell ad-free content will be yet another test for the traditional TV business model. The question becomes: Why watch ads when …

Viacom's media rivals support the company's lawsuit against Google and YouTube, executives told Bloomberg News. "This is a key issue for our industry, it is time for YouTube to remove unauthorized material from its site," a Time Warner spokesman said. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has also asked Google to take down unauthorized content, while last week announcing plans to create its own video rival. The Walt Disney Co. continues to negotiate with YouTube; a company spokesman says the parties are confident of an agreement. CBS Corp., NBC Universal and the BBC all have content agreements with the video site, subject …

Microsoft Corp. has decided to focus its legal attention on a longtime Net problem: cybersquatting. The company just launched a series of lawsuits in the U.S. and the European Union against so-called "cybersquatters," or those who, with no affiliation whatsoever with the brand, register a trademarked domain name with the intent to profit from it. "Microsoft.com" would be a perfect example. Cybersquatters hold trademark owners hostage by either forcing them to pay for domains using their name, linking back to the real site through an affiliate network and receiving a cut for the traffic, or by displaying nothing but …

Why would any Web company that's amassed a good amount of traffic ever change its Web address? Topix.net, a news aggregator that's jointly owned by publishing giants Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune, is in the throes of such a transformation after it purchased the rights to the domain Topix.com for $1 million in January. (Note: because "Topix" isn't a trademark, the use of Topix.com by another company wouldn't be considered cybersquatting.) The switch could have "disastrous short-term results" -- as in search results. Google, the Web's de facto search engine, is responsible for 90% of Topix.net's search traffic; search traffic …

Quarterly guidance: it's become the "metric" by which a public company's stock rises and falls. Indeed, meeting guidance and then issuing a positive outlook is often tantamount to a nice stock boost. Missing the target in one or more of these categories can send a public company's stock plummeting. This has pretty much been the case with Yahoo, eBay and Amazon.com, three of the Web's largest companies. But not always with Google, the industry's biggest (not including Microsoft, which is mostly software) and most dynamic company. Google didn't always issue guidance, a move that left analysts guessing what …

Too many fake friends on your MySpace profile? Well, you're not alone. There's a growing trend among Web users to leave MySpace for closed-off social networks like Vox, a social-networking service that offers users a greater deal of privacy and customization. Users can make certain information available to the public, while reserving personal items, such as photos and memos, for close friends and business associates. Since its launch on October 26, Vox has tripled in size, says Andrew Anker, a general manager of the company's parent, Six Apart. The other big phenomenon in social networking is services targeting specific …