Mediaweek reports that NBC has sold out 85% of its online ad inventory for the Beijing Olympics, beginning Aug. 8. Major buyers include McDonald's, Johnson & Johnson, Hilton, Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch, among others. Unsurprisingly, most of their spending is being directed at video, with Mediaweek claiming that NBC plans to deliver an unprecedented 2,200 hours of live footage on NBCOlympics.com. This is pretty remarkable when you consider that during the winter games two years ago, the broadcasting giant streamed just a single hockey game live. Due to the 12-15 hour time difference, NBC is expecting particularly heavy usage among office …

Google, which had been ordered by a U.S. court to provide personal details on millions of YouTube users as part of a copyright infringement suit with Viacom, is now being ordered to hand over the database without the user data, the company revealed in a statement yesterday. "We are pleased to report that Viacom, MTV and other litigants have backed off their original demand for all users' viewing histories and we will not be providing that information," the statement read. Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion for copyright infringement. The media giant claims that it identified 160,000 unauthorized clips …

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn make a fine trio, says BoomTown writer Kara Swisher. Yang's indecisiveness has cost his company billions in market cap. Under Ballmer, Microsoft has spent the better part of the last decade "not getting the Internet." And Icahn, well, Icahn never "got" and has shown no intention of ever "getting" the Internet, either. The chief question shareholders face on Aug. 1 is which of this fine bunch can resurrect the once-mighty Yahoo. Until then, Swisher says the fighting will continue, with each man earnestly professing to move …

On July 14, a judge ruled in favor of ecommerce giant eBay in what BusinessWeek claims was "a victory for companies across the Internet that rely on advertising or the buying and selling of goods." Luxury retailer Tiffany & Co. had sued eBay for not doing enough to stop the sale of counterfeit items on its site. Had eBay lost the case, the online retailing giant might have been unable to offer name-brand goods on its shopping site, but the result also have shaped the outcome of other cases involving content distributors and trademark and copyright owners. Indeed, this one …

Carl Icahn ruined what would have otherwise been a relatively nice search deal for Yahoo, says Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget. While sources from Microsoft and Yahoo disagree as to the extent of Icahn's involvement in the deal, Blodget assumes for the sake of argument that Icahn was to be put in charge of what remained of Yahoo following the sale of its search business to Microsoft. "Absent such a condition, Microsoft's new search proposal is actually reasonable (or at least worth serious consideration)," he says. A Yahoo course claims that Friday's proposal was a joint deal between Microsoft CEO …

Throughout 2007, rumors of Google's mobile push included speculation about a so-called gPhone that would presumably run on operating system software developed by the company. However, following the announcement of Android and the Open Handset Alliance, the Google phone rumors were promptly squashed-only to be resurrected over the weekend when TechCrunch interpreted recent comments made by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to mean that the gPhone might be back. As Mediaweek says, "The trio of Google execs also used the opportunity to talk about the inroads the company is making with its own branded mobile phone as a …

Don't have a personal Web page? You will soon, says The Wall Street Journal's Jason Fry. In fact, soon, it will be weird if you don't, he claims, as the personal Web page evolves from something that makes you cool into more of a social obligation. Your personal page will be how people find and keep in touch with you, but it will also be how you defend against rumor and misinformation, Fry says. It starts with the demise of the landline and the decline of the cell phone as a means of acceptable communication between people who don't yet …

Tech stocks haven't exactly weathered the economic downturn as many optimists predicted: the NASDAQ has fallen 15% since Jan. 1, and some of its bellwethers have endured even more hurt: Google is off 22%, Intel is down 24% and Microsoft and Amazon are each down more than 30%. So much for being a safe haven. It's strange, because most big techs have relatively light debt, large cash hoards, and substantial overseas operations. Wisdom would tell you that this is the place to invest in tight economy. But BusinessWeek says that these very factors, factors which insulated tech stocks during the …