Apple, Inc. is getting closer to Web industry leader Google. The companies on Thursday announced that videos from Google's YouTube would be available for play on Apple's iPhone, which goes on sale next Friday. YouTube clips were made available on the company's Apple TV service a few weeks ago. Easily the most-hyped consumer electronics product of the year, if not the past five years, the iPhone marries the media-playing capabilities of Apple's iPod with a Web-enabled cellular phone running on AT&T's wireless network. iPhone users will be able to download music and video, but it will also be …

On his Searchblog, John Battelle publishes the findings of Interpublic SEM firm Reprise in its early interactions with Yahoo's Panama search ad system. Overall, the search firm calls Panama "a significant upgrade over the previous Yahoo DTC (Direct Traffic Center) system, but it worries about the complex system's ability "to access the long tail of the market." The Reprise study evaluates Panama's campaign management and performance, user interface and technology over a three-month period (January-March). In terms of SEM performance, the cost-per-click for keywords actually dropped 6.2% during a period where the average CPC for Google AdWords increased …

Yahoo CEO Terry Semel is already out, Jerry Yang in in, but neither Wall Street nor the news media is convinced the move will spark a positive turnaround. The stock has suffered badly because it's constantly being compared to high-flying Google. Yahoo may soon face an activist group that attempts to force the company into exploring strategic alternatives--a possible sale, merger or partnership. Should that occur, Yahoo might find itself in bed with News Corp., AT&T, AOL, Microsoft or Comcast. News Corp. in particular has been monitoring the situation, and might consider selling its MySpace unit to Yahoo in …

News Corp. has enjoyed a good deal of publicity for its 2005 acquisition of the social network MySpace, and while it will no doubt pay for itself one day, it hasn't enjoyed the kind of wildfire revenue growth befitting a site that attracts 70 million users per month. Management is constantly looking for new ways to monetize, and the company's latest move could bring eBay into the fold. "We will at some point offer user generated e-commerce transactions," he said. "So if you're on your site, and you have a line of T-shirts you have designed and want to …

Google has been working on AdSense for video, but little is reported about its progress. That may be because it's original partner, Viacom, is now suing the company for $1 billion. Big G's legal problems have opened the door for smaller guys to create the much-needed networking products that could make online video advertising a force. London-based blinkx is readying such an ad platform. Called blinkx AdHoc, the new product will launch next Monday as way to target ads alongside or in Web videos based on speech-recognition technology. The program allows advertisers to buy specific words spoken in videos …

Joost, the online TV service that utilizes peer-to-peer technology, is outmoded, says Dmitry Shapiro, CEO of rival video upstart Veoh. Joost is a closed system that only shows video from the producers it has deals with. Shapiro thinks Internet TV should be something more open--like the Web itself--that draws content from both professional producers and the greater online community. Later this week, Veoh will unveil a competing service called VeohTV, a P2P-based desktop application that allows you to watch any video from anywhere on the Web. What exactly does that mean? VeohTV is RSS-like in the sense that it …

Google has prevailed in its antitrust complaint against rival Microsoft Corp. The latter agreed to change a feature in its Windows Vista operating system that Google said was anticompetitive. The out-of-court settlement means there will be no trial. Google chief complaint was that Vista had been designed to frustrate computer users who wanted to use software other than Microsoft's to search through files on their hard drives. As yet, the changes Microsoft will have to make have not been outlined in a formal report, as the Justice Department and state prosecutors squabble over the language. The Justice Department was …

YouTube, like parent Google before it, has made the bold move of unveiling local-language sites in nine different countries withlocally popular content. Up until now, user-generated videos and comments could be posted in any language, although the YouTube interface was only in English. According to co-founder Steve Chen, more than half of YouTube's audience comes from outside the United States. YouTube will retain its brand name in each of the following new country sites: Brazil, Britain, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. Stage one of the country-specific overhaul will see local homepage and video uploading …

In the battle for Dow Jones & Company and editorial control of The Wall Street Journal, supermarket mogul Ron Burkle is preparing a surprise bid involving the Web giant Yahoo that would rival News Corp., General Electric, IAC/InterActive Corp. and others reported to be interested in the publishing giant. Burkle sits on Yahoo's board and is frustrated at the company's inability to compete with Google. Adding a member of the beleaguered newspaper publishing industry (although DJC's Web properties have done admittedly well) to an already-beleaguered Internet company doesn't sound like a recipe for success. But sources say Burkle is …

It's high time Google got itself a new slogan. For a company of its size and ambition, the whole "don't be evil" thing sounds like a self-righteous claim to world domination. And as just about everyone in the Web business knows by now, Google's partners are starting to get angry. EBay, the search giant's largest buyer of search ads, last week became the first major advertiser to pull ads from Google. How deeply that decision affects both their businesses remains to be seen, but more importantly, says Jupiter Research analyst Kevin Heisler, eBay stood up to Google, and …