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It's been revealed that one of Britain's leading websites spent more than $200 million of taxpayers' money last year, with commercial rivals complaining it's difficult to compete fairly. The website of the British Broadcasting Corporation ... (bbc.co.uk) is regularly among the most visited UK sites. Last December it attracted an estimated 16.5 million visitors, more than the average figures for sites such as eBay. The BBC is an independent broadcasting group which runs television and radio stations. Neither its stations nor its UK website carry any advertising and most of its funding comes from a ... (view more)

As technology doesn't seem to be helping Microsoft in the search engine wars, the firm is resorting to a tactic that predates computing itself: bribery. Registered users of Live.com will be paid every time they visit a dedicated 'Live Search ... cashback' site, click on a search result to a participating website and then make a purchase. The amount they'll 'earn' will be a portion of the sale price set by the retailer and, once the user has racked up $5, they'll be paid through Paypal, online bank account, or check. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) In most cases, customers will earn money for every product ... (view more)

Facebook has unveiled a new look for profile pages in an effort to avoid the clutter that some analysts say hurts rival social networking site MySpace. The main change, which will take effect next month, is that pages will be reorganised into four ... tabbed 'folders' rather than having all the information in one long and unruly list. The four folders are: Feed, which will be the page that appears by default. This contains all the updates relevant to that person such as adding new friends, changing status updates or being tagged in a photograph. Info, which has all the profile details such as ... (view more)

Yahoo is to follow Google's leads in highlight potential security risks in sites which show up in its search results. There are several differences between the two systems. Google highlights the most serious cases -- sites which exploit flaws in ... browser software and automatically download viruses -- with a warning. In Yahoo's case, the sites will automatically be deleted from the list of results. Yahoo will also highlight pages which appear to include downloads which are likely to include viruses, spyware (programmes which collect information from a user's computer without their knowledge) ... (view more)

Is "racial profiling" the best way to compete with Google? It would seem that InterActive Corp (Nasdaq: IACI), the owner of Ask.com, thinks so. The company has introduced a new search engine site called Rushmoredrive.com to provide more relevant ... search information for the African-American searcher. The new search engine was created using behavioral targeting techniques. Researchers analyzed the results of the most popular search terms used in geographic areas that have large black populations. The site then catalogues the 'click-throughs' from those results to determine the sites of most ... (view more)

The image-hosting site Flickr has launched an online video page that appears to be a natural rival to YouTube. However, most analysts think the move has come too late. It's an extension of the search engine wars: Flickr is owned by Yahoo, while ... Google owns YouTube. Though Yahoo already has a video hosting service, it's only available to media outlets and professionals. The new Flickr service will allow anyone to view videos, but only 'pro' members can upload footage. This will cost $24.95 a year, and even then clips will be limited to 90 seconds. That's in sharp contrast to YouTube, which ... (view more)

Google is the web's most powerful entity. That much is not in doubt. The search engine's popularity dwarfs competitors Yahoo or Ask.com, and no one knows it more than retailers. A number of companies are now a bit worried Google is inching up on ... their territory, offering a service that steers consumers away from official retail web sites for an alternate page established by the search titan itself. It works like this. A web user enters the typical, one-in-a-gazillion search on Google. Nothing new there. However, once the results are listed, a second box created by Google points those shoppers ... (view more)

NBC has formally launched its online video site Hulu.com, seen by many as a potential rival to YouTube. The site, which is also backed by Fox's parent group News Corporation, contains more than 250 TV episodes from shows such as The Office and The ... Simpsons, plus movies such as The Big Lebowski. There are also movies and TV shows available in clip-form only. Sports fans can choose from clips of recent NBA and NHL games, or full-length NCAA basketball games from the past 25 years. Around 50 different TV stations, movie producers and websites are represented in the project. Some shows include ... (view more)

After directing his company to sink $240 million into a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook last year, the company's iconic leader has personally abandoned the social networking site in favor of the more business oriented LinkedIn. As a company, Microsoft ... is still working with Facebook of course; however, Gates himself has decided to set aside his profile because of the massive amounts of friend requests he was receiving; no doubt his 'FB friends' were also driving him crazy with constant invitations for mindless applications, but that's another story. The LinkedIn community seems to be very ... (view more)

The Swiss bank Julius Baer ... (view more)