Google is attempting to further streamline online news consumption with Fast Flip -- an "experimental" news hub that lets readers flip through screen shots of Web pages from various publishers like a physical magazine. But, despite the search giant placing ads around the articles and sharing revenue with publishers, the question remains: How with the service affect an already flailing news business. Google News developer Krishna Bharat says the service at least "tests" his theory "that being able to read articles faster means people will read more of them, driving more ad revenue to publishers."

Like many industries before it, the Web is now shaking the very underpinnings of higher education in this country, writes the Washington Post. "Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering," it contends. "Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet . . . The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges cannot survive." Why? Quite simply, online classes are just cheaper to produce. And, as technology continues to improve, distance-learning will rapidly shed its stigma and emerge as the norm.

Despite a recent spate of poor earnings and the emergence of countless cooler startups, Microsoft seems to have retained its street cred among the next generation of professionals. Though, it's not for lack of investment. Indeed, in a year when Microsoft cut nearly 5,000 jobs, the company continued to lavish money on its internship program, bringing about 1,000 students from across the country to the Redmond, Wash., campus for the summer. The goal? Obviously to recruit future employees, and to turn the interns into walking billboards for Microsoft back at school.

So, it turns out that Michelangelo Volpi, chairman of beleaguered Web TV startup Joost, was actually forced out last week, and that he's being investigated by the company. The probe apparently centers on the company's peer-to-peer technology -- the same technology used by Skype under license from Joltid, which is owned by Skype's founders. eBay, which recently sold Skype at a loss, plans to go to court next year to settle licensing issues around that same P2P technology.

Apparently bearish on China's B-to-B Web marketplace industry, Yahoo is selling its entire 1.14% stake in Alibaba.com for about $150 million. Yahoo still holds a 40% stake in the unlisted parent company, Alibaba Group. Yahoo paid more than $1 billion in 2005 as part of its investment into Alibaba Group. In late 2007, Alibaba.com raised $1.49 billion in its IPO in Hong Kong, with Yahoo buying a portion of the offering at the time. Amid company restructuring, tensions apparently emerged between Alibaba Group and Yahoo, which recently became more strained when word leaked that Yahoo's new CEO Carol Bartz wasn't …

In a story that hits a little too close to home, The New York Times has posted a "note" to online readers to be aware of phony ads running on its site. Some readers have apparently seen unauthorized pop-up ads promoting antivirus software on NYTimes.com, so the paper is warning visitors who see the ad not to click on it but to restart their browsers instead. The whole matter of malware must have a few online readers thinking back to simpler times, when the only risks the paper presented were inky fingers and the occasional paper cut.

Call us timid, but we can't think of a marketing assignment we'd want less than the one on which Yahoo is about to embark. According to BoomTown, the beleaguered company is planning to launch a major ad campaign next week designed to change its image among advertisers and consumers, who may view it as a lost soul without clear purpose or direction. If reports are correct, Yahoo is going to emphasize its size and scale, which is still unrivaled on the Web with regard to online display advertising. Indeed, for all its troubles and misadventures, Yahoo remains …

Aside from CEO Steve Ballmer scolding a Microsoft employee for flaunting an iPhone, Bing 2.0 was the biggest news to leak from a private company meeting on Thursday. Yes, it appears that the software giant is about ready to relaunch its search engine and great Google killer, according to a burst of unconfirmed employee tweets. "Bing 2.0, out this month, has some exciting new features ... Imagine seeing maps plus pics from the neighborhood of a restaurant to try," reads one tweet catalogued by ZDNet, while another enthuses: "BING 2.0 terrific !! watch out guys ! bing + silverlight …

Twitter has revised its terms of services so that users retain their rights to any content they submit, post or display on or through the micro-blogging service. However, "By submitting, posting or displaying content on or through the services, you grant (Twitter) a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed)." This clause basically allows users to prevent anyone else -- except Twitter -- from re-publishing their tweets for profit.

On Wednesday, a resolute Steve Jobs told The Times' David Pogue that Apple has absolutely no plans to create a Kindle-like e-reader. Oddly enough, Jobs said the company was only interested in general purpose devices because "people just probably aren't willing to pay for a dedicated device." This from the guy who created the iPod? Weird. Either way, analysts and bloggers seem loath to believe the man. A few products and services that Jobs and his minions have flat-out rejected, but which Apple has since launched include FM radio built into iPods, video iPods ("It's about the music, stupid."), and, …