Google on Wednesday upped the stakes in the net neutrality battle with ISPs by unveiling Measurement Lab, an open platform that allows users to identify problems with their Internet connection. M-Lab includes three publicly accessible tools. One, called Glasnost, tests whether BitTorrent traffic is being blocked or tampered with, another tests your connection's overall speed, and the last is a diagnostic tool that tells you if you're suffering from any speed barriers. Google's Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf says M-Lab was launched to help the academic community. "Unfortunately, researchers lack widely distributed servers with ample connectivity," Cerf wrote in a …

As the recession deepens, more Americans are playing free online games. According to a comScore report, display advertising views on online gaming sites surged 29% in November from a year earlier, thanks to an uptick in unique visits to such sites. While overall Internet traffic grew 4% in December, the number of visitors to online gaming sites grew 27% from December 2007, reaching 86 million. Time spent per visitor also surged 42%. "It appears that online, ad-supported gaming is one of the activities that has benefited during this economic downturn," said comScore analyst Edward Hunter. "Not only have consumers turned …

Most Facebook apps, including those that allow you to send zombies, vampires and sheep to friends, are a colossal waste of time. They also cause clutter. Thankfully, Facebook's redesign relegated many of these apps to other sections of the site. This made it tougher for developers and brands to launch new apps successfully. Advertising Age contributor Ian Schafer warns that before you write-off Facebook apps as just another passing fad, consider Facebook Connect, which he says spawns "a new breed of app that may very well be more powerful than several poking and parking apps combined." Why? Because these apps …

Ahead of Yahoo's earnings, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster opined, in a research note, that the struggling Web portal should consider buying the struggling New York Times Co. and Nick Denton's Gawker Media. "These content acquisitions would allow Yahoo to own and distribute a collection of the best content on the Web in addition to generating short-form content to maximize page views and stickiness," he wrote. Other suggestions included selling Yahoo Search to Microsoft and acquiring a microblogging service like FriendFeed. Yahoo buying The New York Times Co. is a crazy suggestion, writes GigaOm's Mathew Ingram. "With …

Yahoo may have announced better-than-expected fourth quarter earnings, but analysts still see few signs for optimism for the laboring Internet giant, despite recent cost cuts and a new CEO. The company suffered a net loss of $303 million due to the costs associated with layoffs and office closings, as well as a drop in value of its overseas properties. Its first quarter guidance was also weak. As Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said, "We see no growth path forward. The only thing that's going to excite investors is a transformational move, and that could take months or quarters." Indeed, …

MySpace has begun letting brands take over its homepage and other "safe havens" on the social networking site that appeal to advertisers who are unwilling to put their brands on personal profile pages, the Financial Times reports. Company execs claim the move positions MySpace as a greater threat to the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN in the market for selling display ads to big brands. "We can get 50 million eyeballs on our homepage so we can compete against the portals," said MySpace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe. "We're not going to compete against Google and their 20,000 employees. …

Mark Cuban hits upon a major problem facing online video providers today. Say you want to stream a video to reach 10,000 users and you don't want to upload your video to YouTube to do it. Your only option, he says, is to use a content delivery network like Akamai or Limelight. If your video is to be streamed live and you are expecting exactly 10,000 viewers, then you have to hire one of these companies that offer scaled streaming. The problem, he says, is that even 10,000 people are considered a large number these days. "There are only a …