ICANN, the Internet's California-based regulator, will soon vote on whether to begin a complete overhaul of the way people navigate the Internet. The organization, which stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, will decide if the strict rules on so-called top-level domain names such as .com and .edu, can be relaxed. If approved, the move would allow firms to turn brands and individuals' names into Web addresses. The move would also allow names written in Chinese or Arabic. "We are making it open for anyone to apply in any character set, not just Roman characters," ICANN …

Microsoft has begun the battle to keep a Yahoo-Google search pact from materializing, but antitrust lawyers and technology analysts contacted by Fortune don't seem to think the software giant has much of a prayer stopping this one. Even so, Ballmer & friends won't go down without a fight: as Fortune says, Microsoft seeks to either derail or heavily delay the Google search deal, sending lawyers to Washington to discuss Google's search monopoly; meanwhile, the company is also still interested in acquiring Yahoo's search business, which would now cost an additional $250 million, per the Google buyout clause. According …

The Walt Disney Co., concerned that its main Web site isn't entertaining enough, is once again overhauling Disney.com. This will be the second recent makeover for the company's Web hub, which is the top destination for children's entertainment on the Web, although it faces increasingly stiff competition from the likes of Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and WebKinz. Among the changes: more free video, including full-length films like "Finding Nemo," more games, and more interactive features that take advantage of users' cell phones. For example, users who create fairy avatars in a virtual world called Pixie Hollow will be able to …

Twitter, the microblogging phenomenon whose simple call-to-action, "what are you doing?" is revolutionizing the way people communicate, this week closed a long-rumored round of funding led by Spark Capital and Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos. The $15 million round values the company-which has no revenue model-at just under $100 million. Part of the cash windfall will be used to make the service more reliable, as Twitter is notoriously prone to outages. As TechCrunch's Michael Arrington once wrote, "They are the only service I know of where users rejoice when they simply manage to keep their service live." Twitter had …

With Android, Google is attempting to do for the mobile Web what Microsoft did for the desktop: that is, become the Windows of the mobile sphere. However, as The Wall Street Journalreported earlier this week, that ambitious plan is already running into a few roadblocks. For starters, Verizon and AT&T, the top two carriers in the U.S., have decided to pass on Android, so Google had to settle for T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel, the third and fourth best. The second piece of bad news is that T-Mobile won't have any Android phones ready before the fourth quarter …

Telecom giant AT&T, which provides Internet access to millions, is expanding its efforts in the content delivery business, which has long been the territory of companies like Akamai Technologies and Limelight networks. As more companies launch Web sites with video and other bandwidth-sucking interactive features, AT&T says it will bolster its network infrastructure across the U.S., Europe and parts of Asia, investing more than $70 million by year's end. Content delivery is not a new business for AT&T. Forbes.com and AccuWeather.com are among its CDN customers, but the move to sell more of these services, which help companies deliver …