Really, Google, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. As Michael Arrington says, messing with Google search -- the company's cash cow -- "is serious stuff." It's a strange decision, especially since Google has grown both its search and advertising share this year. So why, Arrington asks, is Google messing with a good thing? In their blog post, Google says the new features are all about improving the search experience and giving people tools to make search even more useful to them. The tools certainly make Google Search more interactive. In fact, Arrington notes that Google has basically copied Wikia …

As the economic outlook worsens, most Silicon Valley tech startups are cutting costs, but not Facebook, says BusinessWeek. The social networking giant is pressing ahead with aggressive plans for growth. As Facebook investor and board member Peter Thiel says, "This is not the time for tech companies to be cutting back; this is the time to be hitting the accelerator." What does that mean, exactly? According to the report, Facebook will continue to go to great lengths to keep user growth high in tough times. This means hiring aggressively, hitting the M&A trail (possibly), and continuing to roll out new …

On Nov. 16, Judy McGrath, MTVN's CEO, joined celebrities and MTV staff to say goodbye to "Total Request Live", one of the cable network's longest-running programs. The Economist says McGrath's appearance was a symbolic way for MTV to say goodbye to the old way of doing things, since her job is to find new ways of doing things. Indeed, the cancellation of TRL, a show in which viewers vote on the most popular music video, reflects the fact that MTV's young audience can easily access whatever music videos they like, whenever they like, online. MTV knows its audience, but it's …

The Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit group behind the popular open source browser Firefox, announced that revenues for Firefox were up 12% to $75 million in 2007, with search royalties from Google accounting for $66 million, or 88% of the total. Mozilla makes money from using Google as the default search engine in the search box on the Firefox browser. Google splits search revenues generated from that placement with the organization. Google's proportion of Mozilla's revenues was up 3% year-over-year, a trend that will likely continue now that Google has extended its contract with Mozilla for three more years. However, TechCrunch …