In terms of traffic growth and market share, it’s just no contest. So many more people hit eBay’s options that Google’s Checkout and Base may as well be invisible.

When Microsoft is beating Google at something, it can’t be a good thing. As Hitwise analyst LeeAnn Prescott noted in her look at how Google Base and Checkout have fared since last summer against eBay and PayPal, Windows Live Expo has a larger market share than Google Base.

Are personalized search results good or bad – or both? With the recent upgrades for Google account holders, a lot of people have begun to reconsider this question; Jim Hedger and Philipp Lenssen were among those who applied their minds to the issue.

Earlier this week, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter in which he criticized the major record labels for demanding stringent copy-protection technology that limits the flexibility of the music to be played across different device platforms.

Representatives from Warner have rebuffed Jobs’ assertion that the elimination of DRM would bolster the online music market, citing potential privacy concerns.

EMI, however, is rumored to be looking at ways to unlock the DRM on its musical catalogue.

Google’s not doing so well in China; according to some estimates, the market share of its main competitor, Baidu, is 35% larger. Perhaps, then, the company will listen to Isaac Mao, who has given his opinion on how “to save Google in China and save Internet in China.”

The International Olympic Committee said athletes competing at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing could possibly be allowed to blog about it – maybe – if they have to – but they’re still not really sure if it’s a good idea.

It seems not a day goes by that a new “Digg-clone” pops-up on the radar and everyone chastises them for copying the popular voting model.

Google rose to dominance via the back alleys of word of mouth, catching giants like Yahoo and Microsoft completely off guard with geek credibility that eventually spilled over into the mainstream. But now that Google is playing with the big boys, it may be time to act like one and actually promote its own services.

The latest lesson in Marketing 101 came courtesy of MySpace, when the social networking juggernaut chose eBay for its e-commerce partner instead of Google Base.

Last week, Engadget reported that sources close to Microsoft had passed along information about a Zune-based competitor to Apple’s iPhone. Following up on those reports, CrunchGear goes on to say today that the Zune phone is not just a rumor and is confirmed for a 2007 release.

Google’s confirming publicly that they believe the current Internet may become choked by online video. This is related to a barrier to Google’s growth — one of the only serious ones — that has been nagging at me for some time: globally, they don’t own the pipes. Big utility monopolies still hold a lot of cards around the world. The smart money would likely partner with them.

A survey by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) found that nearly everyone running a paid search campaign tosses some cash in Google’s direction.

With $9.4 billion spent on North American search engine marketing in 2006, it is easy to see why Google has remained the dominant power in SEM. If it is a given that advertisers will spend money on AdWords, no one is going to displace them from their perch.

Usually when we talk about Google and personnel, it’s to report that the company has hired yet another big name, and it’s more than likely a major defection from a rival company.

Yesterday, Danny Sullivan posted an interesting response to Jason Calacanis’ latest potshot at the search engine optimization industry. Basically, as he’s been prone to do in the past, Calacanis ripped SEO. He said that it was 90% snake oil salesmen and warned the Internet populace in general not to smoke the SEO crack. Then he got nasty…

If the CEO wants to know how to save some money from being wasted each day, tell her the best people she can pressure aren’t the employees, but the company’s federal Congressmen.

Forget about gathering all the staff in one room and telling them how they are money-sucking time wasters. The problem may not be their fault. Spam could be to blame.

Jobster.com took a giant leap into Web 2.0 this week, first announcing that employers can post jobs on the site for free on a new more LinkedIn-style platform, and second confirming that the company will be the exclusively working with social networking site Facebook.

“We spent the last twelve months designing the new Jobster to meet the needs and expectations of the digital generation," said Jobster CEO, Jason Goldberg.

"That’ll do pig, that’ll do," is how SEM-at-home mom and Lactivist Jennifer Laycock concluded her beef with the National Pork Board after receiving a heartfelt apology and the promise of a donation from to the Mother’s Milk Bank of Ohio.

Last week, Yahoo launched its new Panama search platform amidst much buzz throughout the blogosphere. As part of the new model, Yahoo will be implementing a scoring system to determine ad quality, which will in turn have an influence on bid prices for keywords.

We’re less than two weeks into Panama, and already Yahoo has been more forthcoming with information concerning its quality score calculation that Google was within the first two months.

While seeking evidence that a suspect in New Zealand was the member of a burglary ring, authorities in the country tried obtaining details about the man and were rebuffed by Microsoft.

It took a court order for Microsoft to change its tune about not being subject to laws in New Zealand. Police wanted to identify a man who had provided his name, address, and phone number to Microsoft when attempting to purchase a part for a stolen Xbox 360.

Some marketing fails because it does not use market feedback to help improve the ROI on the next generation of marketing. For example, if I make a couple sites and then take what I learned from making those and apply that to making more sites I will probably be more efficient than if I try to make many sites in parallel without collecting feedback.

When you think of Cisco, the company’s prowess in networking and IP technology immediately comes to mind. With today’s announcement, however, it appears that Cisco is branching out into a different kind of networking, the kind geared toward people rather than machines.

Cisco has announced an agreement acquire Five Across, a San Francisco based social networking software company. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but Cisco hopes to complete the purchase by the end of its fiscal third quarter.

After he called the SEO industry a bunch of snake oil salesmen and warned people away from smoking the "SEO crack," venture capitalist Jason Calacanis found himself on the receiving end of a call to action.

The new email service from Microsoft will receive a name that combines the familiar Hotmail name with the heavily-backed Windows Live brand.

Ultimately we think faithful Hotmail users will continue to call the Windows Live branded service by the name they have known for over ten years. Long-time users who recall Hotmail’s origins may remember the various obstacles Microsoft encountered in 1997 when they bought Hotmail and moved it from Solaris to Windows servers.

A branch of the United Nations known as the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has announced plans to continue its relationship with Google; the two groups have already collaborated on an atlas that showed how climate change is affecting the planet.

Numedeon, Inc., creators of Whyville the educational virtual world for children and young teenagers, has created a site for NASA

Earlier this week, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sent forth a public plea to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates concerning the prosecution of a Russian man charged with installing pirated copies of Windows on his classroom’s computers.

Microsoft has declined to drop the charges against the teacher, and the move has the county’s educational system reconsidering its choice of operating systems.

Consequently, it looks like Windows is will lose out to Linux in another market.