The Wall Street Journal says that Yahoo is moving closer to outsourcing its search advertising to Google, after the first week of a two-week Google search test yielded positive results for the Sunnyvale, Calif. Web giant. Of course, that's according to "people familiar with the matter", who various writers in the blogosphere say are probably Yahoo execs simply trying to add more bite to their bluff. Does anybody really think a Yahoo-Google search partnership would pass a regulatory sniff test? The Journal says the two are exploring ways to address those concerns, such as "limiting the partnership to specific …

Internet retailer Bigreds.com is accusing Yahoo of click fraud: overcharging by thousands of dollars as a result of fraudulent clicks that Yahoo did little to prevent. Bigreds, which sells collectibles, is suing the Web giant for more than $1 million after spending more than $900,000 between 2002 and 2006. These fees were based on the number of clicks that Bigreds ads received on sites affiliated with Yahoo and Yahoo's Yahoo Search marketing unit, formerly known as Overture Services. "These clicks were not actual traffic, but were fraudulent clicks," reads Bigreds' complaint, filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in …

EBay's John Donahoe made a strong debut as CEO as the company's first quarter profit surged 22%, thanks to particularly strong numbers from PayPal, eBay's electronic payment service. The Web giant upped its revenue forecast for the year to between $8.7 and $9 billion on earnings per share of $1.70 to $1.75, beating analysts' expectations in both categories. However, as Deutsche Bank analyst Jeetil Patel points out, most of the positive news came from eBay's non-core businesses, as the Web giant's flagship auctions business continues to be plagued by slowing growth, despite the structural changes implemented by Donahoe in …

When YouTube said it would start sharing revenue with its more successful producer partners, some thought the move would pave the way for a new media economy based on cheap production and equally cheap distribution. Well, as The Silicon Alley Insider and others report, even the most successful YouTube video producers won't be quitting their day jobs anytime soon if Google continues to pay producers a $0.80 per thousand viewers. Yikes. In an interview with NewTeeVee, the producer of "Break a Leg" a popular YouTube video that garnered 2-million views, recently got a check for $1,600. A little math …

As you probably know by now, Internet bellwether Google will deliver its earnings after today's close amid mounting anxiety that the search giant bombed the first quarter. As Bernstein Research analyst Jeffrey Lindsay says, "There's a lot riding on (these results)," as Google "is such a big part of the Internet that if it's doing well, it doesn't necessarily mean the other guys are doing well. But if Google's doing badly, it means everybody's doing badly." Indeed, such is the search giant's importance that a miss would likely weigh on the entire stock market, Bloomberg says. Thanks in part …