"Google needs an Act II." So said Jordan Rohan, managing director of RBC Capital Markets. If Google doesn't figure out how to move beyond search ads, Rohan said, the "law of large numbers" will inevitably shrink revenue growth, probably down to the 30% range.

Many have wondered whether blogs, social networks and other types of online media will eventually displace television, newspapers and other more traditional media. But perhaps that's the wrong question. Arianna Huffington, political pundit and online media entrepreneur, compares posing the query to asking people to choose between Ginger and Mary Ann. "I say, 'Let's have a three-way,'" Huffington told the audience this morning at MediaPost's OMMA Hollywood conference

Viacom might have sued YouTube for $1 billion this week, but other TV networks, including former corporate sibling CBS, see a use for the video sharing site.

Google will no longer indefinitely store data that could link individual users with their search histories, but instead will make the records anonymous after 18 to 24 months, the company said on its blog yesterday.

NBC Universal will start selling episodes of "Heroes," "The Office," "Monk," "Battlestar Galactica" and other full-length TV shows to wireless users that subscribe to MobiTV, the companies said this morning.

Setting the stage for a legal showdown over the limits of copyright law in the age of video-sharing, Viacom today filed a federal lawsuit against Google/YouTube.

Search giant Google has quietly started selling TV ads, The Wall Street Journal reports.

News Corp apparently is mulling creating a video portal that could potentially rival YouTube. Fox Interactive Media head Peter Levinsohn reportedly told investors at a Bear Stearns conference this week that the company is in talks to amass a trove of video clips for online distribution.

Lawmakers in Connecticut this week said they will introduce a bill aimed at restricting teens from using social networking sites without their parents' consent. The proposed legislation would require social networking sites to verify users' ages and prohibit those under 18 from setting up profiles, unless their parents approved.

Last year, FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz publicly called for action against the marketers that use adware companies to serve pop-ups to consumers -- at least when those companies get their adware on people's computers without their consent.