Matthew Hicks

While a controversial back-ordering service for Web addresses moved another step closer to becoming a reality over the weekend, pending lawsuits leave its future murky. The board of directors for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers on Saturday approved the back-ordering service, called the wait listing service (WLS), during their Rome meeting. The […]

A federal patent examiners initial review has found the Web browser patent at the center of a major verdict against Microsoft Corp. to be invalid. Eolas Technologies Inc. won a $521 million jury verdict last year in its patent-infringement lawsuit against Microsoft, prompting an outcry from the Webs major standards body. The World Wide Web […]

NEW YORK—InfoSpace Inc. is adding the ability to read XML syndication feeds into the next release of its search toolbar planned for April, joining the growing ranks of search companies supporting the technology. InfoSpace officials this week demonstrated the new features of the toolbar that support the XML feeds, both in Really Simple Syndication (RSS) […]

America Online Inc. is moving into the burgeoning social networking field with the launch of a new service from its ICQ instant messaging group. ICQ announced on Thursday its ICQ Universe social networking service that, unlike most social networking sites so far, embeds instant messaging into the services so members can view presence information as […]

Spoke Software Inc. is planning to release by June a hosted version of its enterprise applications that will increase the options for businesses wanting to hook into social networking, company officials said. The Palo Alto, Calif., company this week announced Spoke Workgroups, a Web-based version of its Spoke Accounts applications designed for smaller groups of […]

NEW YORK—Yahoo Inc., with it launch this week of a revamped program for Web sites to pay for inclusion in its search engine, is attempting to reap the rewards of its flurry of search acquisitions last year as it takes a different approach from rival Google Inc. Search engine marketers and analysts, gathered here for […]

NEW YORK—The debate over the fairness and relevancy of paid search spilled onto the stage at the Jupitermedias Search Engine Strategies 2004 conference here on Wednesday. On one side: Google Inc., which objects to any commingling of paid search with its Web index. On the other: Yahoo Inc., which embraced this week a program for […]

Web conferencing vendors are branching out with better integration of video into online meetings and links into customer relationship management applications. In separate announcements on Monday, Raindance Communications Inc. launched its latest Web conferencing release with new voice-activate desktop video features, while WebEx Communications Inc. announced a partnership with Web-based CRM vendor Salesforce.com Inc. With […]

In another sign of the growing interest in enterprise social networking, Barry Dillers InterActiveCorp on Monday acquired startup ZeroDegrees Inc. as it expands its scope of community-oriented Web sites. Six-month-old ZeroDegrees, of Santa Monica, Calif., offers an online network targeted to businesspeople who want to connect with friends and associates for sales leads, recruiting and […]

A day after VeriSign–the company that manages the Internets most popular domains—sued the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization offered a short response. In a statement released on Friday, ICANN said it has worked closely with VeriSign in recent years and is “disappointed that VeriSign has again chosen confrontation over consensus.” […]

A group of eight registrars on Friday sued the Internet domain-naming oversight body and VeriSign Inc. in an attempt to block a proposed service for back-ordering Web addresses. In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles, the registrars allege that the VeriSign-backed service is a threat to competition in the domain-name industry and […]

VeriSign Inc. on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the organization that oversees the domain-name system, accusing the group of improperly delaying new services that VeriSign wants to offer. VeriSign, in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, alleges that ICANN has overstepped it authority […]