Fresh ComScore data (link: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206107165) indicates that Google's YouTube is winning the online video wars, but media companies don't care. Professional producers of content, like Viacom and NBC Universal, are also trying to attract large audiences on their video sites. These media giants are YouTube competitors, though the data would show that that strategy isn't working. They refuse to post their content on what is by far the Web's largest video site, and that means they're losing out. Meanwhile, Viacom is still suing Google for facilitating the illegal uploading of its copyrighted content, while the other …

The battle for Yahoo's independent future is getting ugly. The playground-like war of words between Microsoft and Yahoo has escalated. In response to Yahoo's rejection of the $45 billion bid as "substantially" undervaluing its assets, Microsoft hit back, calling the response "unfortunate and insisting that Microsoft's proposal was "full and fair." Yahoo is frantically searching for alternatives to try and force Microsoft into upping its bid price (which at the time represented a 62 percent premium on Yahoo's stock price). Microsoft shareholders, less than impressed with the bid, have cut more than $4 from the software giant's …

There is a battle brewing for ownership of your address book. It all started when MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn started asking users if they wanted to port their contact lists, giving them instant friends on their social networking profiles. The network effect [created by syncing contacts] is a prime driver of the Internet and is critical to the success of burgeoning social networks. But who owns that data? It depends whom you ask. Google and Yahoo, which provide email and other contact-based services, let users control their contact lists, but Microsoft is less clear. The software giant has …

After four months of striking, what exactly has Writers Guild Association of America won? The Wall Street Journal (link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120256914656156471.html?mod=e-commerce_primary_hs) says the ordeal cost writers more than $270 million in up-front compensation, while Silicon Alley Insider (link: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/2/writers_make_modest_gains_on_digital) claims the dollar gap between the writers and studios was only worth an extra $7.2 million per year. The most important thing the writers won was a stake in the future: Web revenues. "By gaining jurisdiction over any original material Hollywood produces for the Internet, the Writers Guild of America has ensured its survival," says report author Lacey Rose. She …

The London Times reports this morning that Yahoo has restarted merger talks with Time Warner's AOL in what can only be conceived as a desperate attempt to get Microsoft to up its $45 billion bid for the flagging Internet giant. How badly does Yahoo want to avoid a hostile takeover? According to the Times, the company spent the greater part of the past week searching frantically for alternatives with its team of advisors from Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. In addition to AOL, Yahoo is also exploring possible partnerships with the likes of Google and the Walt Disney Company. …

As the writers' strike continued to keep good television off the air, U.S. Web users ramped up their online video viewing in December to more than 10 billion videos, according to a survey from comScore. Google's YouTube absolutely trounced the competition for video views, as more than half (79 million) of the 141 million viewers visited the Google video site, which accounted for more than 97 percent of videos viewed across the search engine's properties. More numbers: Google's market share in terms of viewers was a whopping 43 percent, followed by MySpace parent Fox Interactive Media with 23.9 percent …