The music industry has a new Internet problem, writes BusinessWeek's Douglas MacMillan. Whereas online piracy was once the chief concern for the big record labels, now online music services like Imeem, Last.fm and MySpace Music are eating away at sales revenues. The irony about these services is that the major record labels are partners, receiving a cut of their fees and advertising revenues. Ad-supported online music services were supposed to serve as a legal alternative to online piracy, while providing incremental revenue for the labels as consumers discovered new music. The reality, MacMillan says, is that these services have ended …

Zimbra, the Yahoo-owned email and business software provider, announced on Thursday that it has crossed the 40 million user mark, which VentureBeat notes is no small achievement for a company that charges for email (most of its customers are corporations). In fact, according to comScore, Zimbra actually has more monthly unique visitors than Google's Gmail: 31.4 million to Gmail's 31.2 million. VB's Anthony Ha notes that comparing a consumer-driven Web mail product like Gmail to a more business-oriented product like Zimbra is a bit of "an apples to oranges" comparison, but Zimbra's surging popularity is impressive, nonetheless (last year, it …

Fortune's Jessi Hempel takes a long look at MySpace, the social networking giant that was very much the Web media darling when News Corp. scooped it up for about $580 million in 2005. But now that the company's traffic is leveling out, top talent is starting to leave, and the recession is also taking its toll. An unnamed MySpace exec told Hempel that ad sales actually dipped in January and February. That disappointing news comes on the back of a disappointing 2008, as analysts pegged the social network's full-year revenue at $600 million, far short of the $1 billion target …

CEO Jeffrey Bewkes tells BusinessWeek to expect a leaner Time Warner in the coming weeks, and that this could mean the end of the line for AOL. Bewkes said the media conglomerate would be more focused on TV, movies and journalism. As for AOL, "we are continuing to explore multiple options, including combining AOL with other businesses -- or even a spin-off of all or some of its parts. It remains a top priority." AOL's "parts" include an ad-supported portal, a dial-up subscription business, and a third-party Web advertising service. Bewkes also expanded on his concept of "TV Everywhere" which …

Google added expandable banner units to AdSense on Wednesday, but unlike most expandable ads, they don't grow larger when you mouse over them. Rather, users have to click on the smaller ad to see the larger one. Google probably chose to do it this way because many users find expandable ads annoying, but CNet's Steven Musil says the format could be valuable to both advertisers and customers when used to show movie or video game trailers, or other images that require greater emphasis on detail. The search giant said advertisers are automatically eligible to use the expandable ads if they've …

It's a question that anyone who watches this business wants to know: what's going to happen to Google once its search revenues plateau? During a chat with Internet Analyst Mary Meeker at Morgan Stanley's technology conference on Tuesday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company's next growth driver would basically be its current business working better. Haven't he and other Googlers said that before? What comes after search? In the conversation with Meeker, Schmidt alluded to "a set of display businesses and an exchange" that are being built from DoubleClick, the display advertising provider Google bought for $3.1 billion in …