Little more than two weeks after Google came under fire for replacing satellite images of New Orleans with pre-hurricane Katrina data on its Google Maps service, the Web giant, in conjunction with the Holocaust Memorial Museum, announced that it would provide current images of the war-torn Darfur region in Sudan, where some 200,000 people have been killed since 2003. Using high-resolution imagery, Google Earth users can zoom into Darfur to view more than 1,600 damaged or destroyed villages, in an attempt to provide the average person with better evidence of the genocide. The Sudanese government has repeatedly denied that …

Does Google 411 signal the end of big telecoms' directory phone assistance? It certainly changes things. The days of calling 411 and paying a dollar or more for help appear to be numbered, as Google 411 and a bevy of startups offer free, ad-supported directory service. Those high-cost days have been on the wane since mobile search began connecting users to free yellow pages listings and Web sites. But with Google 411 and other services, consumer can now find people for free, on landlines as well as their cell phones. This is definitely a good thing for …

Photobucket, the photo and video storage site used by legions of MySpace and Facebook users, once prided itself on being the Web's No. 3 destination for online video, in addition to being its No. 1 destination for photos. Well, for now, Photobucket can't claim the latter, since News Corp. began blocking videos embedded from the storage site on MySpace. Embedded Photobucket videos still work on MySpace profiles until users make edits to their profile. Then, the Photobucket links are replaced with a "..." or removed altogether. Irate MySpace users are worried these kinds of competitor clampdowns are turning …

The Utah State Legislature is again meddling in the practice of search engine marketing, having passed a law that limits keyword-based advertising by prohibiting advertisers from buying trademarks that belong to competitors. Utah House Majority Leader David Clark likens the practice to diverting a shopper in a department store to buying a specific dress shirt. "You get right to the front door, and somebody whisks you away to a different store," Clark said. This is a poor analogy. It's not like Google users are bombarded by advertising or even directed to a given result; we're not talking about …

A year ago March, Neil Holloway, president of Microsoft's Europe, Middle East and Africa operations, boasted about how good Microsoft's search engine would become. "What we're saying is that in six months' time, we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google," he said. It never happened. Holloway was later ridiculed across the blogosphere for his bold prediction. Now that a year has passed, InfoWorld's Ephraim Schwartz decided to conduct a little relevancy and quality test of MSN Search. Not surprisingly, he found the software giant's results wanting in both areas, compared to Google and Yahoo. Google …

An old word used in economics textbooks has received a new Web 2.0 makeover: a "widget," no longer just a 20th-century product, now refers to a piece of branded micro-content that can easily be shared between consumers or embedded on a personal blog or social networking profile. The actual content could be anything from a video game to a sports highlight to a branded calculator. A pair of companies from the D.C. suburbs are producing these branded products. "Advertisers are no longer wanting people to click on a link to buy something," said Haroon Mokhtarzada, the 27-year-old …

Is it time for eBay chief Meg Whitman to go? She's been running the Web retail giant for nine years, approaching the one-decade deadline she set at the outset of her reign. It's not exactly a secret that eBay's growth continues to slow, while its stock has failed to rebound. If she decided to leave, there are plenty of other options out there, but Whitman may already be moving in a certain direction. The eBay chief is putting plenty of time in working for Massachusetts' Republican Governor Mitt Romney as the 2008 presidential hopeful's national finance co-chair. And …

It's no secret that big media needs to mine new areas -- and video game publishers, which could use some added financial push, could help them move into the potentially lucrative world of online gaming. As ever, it looks as though Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. will be first out of the gate. Take Two Interactive Software, the beleaguered publisher of the popular but controversial Grand Theft Auto series, is exploring a possible sale, or at least a spinoff of its flagging units. It may sound surprising that a big media company would be interested in such …

When it comes to making purchasing decisions, one in three Internet users report being influenced by Web sites that publish user product reviews, according to a report from search marketing services firm iProspect and JupiterResearch, a Web research firm. The study, which polled 2,223 respondents in January, sought to measure how consumers use social networking sites. Strangely enough, Amazon.com, the Web's largest retailer, turned out to be the most influential site when it came to making decisions, even though it's not a social network. Product reviews, which Amazon encourages its users to fill out, were considered social content …

You could argue that it's a buyer's market out there in the greater ad world now that consumers have taken greater control of their media consumption. Content can be consumed on computer screens, iPods, mobile phones, video game devices, as well as TV, which means that this year, during the annual TV upfront ad sales season, advertisers are starting to realize that they, and not the networks, have the upper hand when it comes to negotiating the sale of commercial time. Thanks to the proliferation of social networking, online video and other eyeball-averting Web phenomena, advertisers are heading …