The portal company decided in September to do away with traditional focus groups for research, and switched to the use of “immersion groups” instead.

The high-stakes match for a stake in Time Warner’s AOL has now seen Yahoo fold its hand and walk away from the table, leaving Microsoft and Google to battle over AOL.

So you’ve got a great creative product and everyone says, “you’ve got to get your creative, artistic butt online!” Problem is, you don’t really know much about getting it there. You’re not a techie, and like laws and sausages, you’d rather not learn about the process-web marketing isn’t you’re business anyway. This is why many online aspirants and creative types are turning to outsourcing to move their wares to Web.

Google has applied for a patent that, at face value, looks as if they are thinking of radically altering the way they rank websites in the general organic search results.

Alan Meckler disclosed on his blog today that JupiterMedia has picked up PR Direct, a French-based royalty-free photo distributor.

A memo that reportedly leaked from Microsoft has been making the rounds of the tech media.

The biggest test for Microsoft’s AdCenter will come early next year, when the company launches an advertiser-supported video network featuring content from the Associated Press.

People often think of a brand as the symbol, name or logo associated with a product. In reality, branding involves far more.

The bright new Internet world of web-based services and open APIs delivered by Google and others just had a big shadow cast across it by Microsoft. Several news outlets like the Wall Street Journal got a leaked copy of a Microsoft internal email from Bill Gates…

Skype poses five issues for enterprises, the study claims, and should be kept out of the business on security and privacy grounds.

Licensing is a method of leveraging an organization’s process, trademark, patent, or other intellectual property for a fee or royalty.

The latest controversy surrounding Google’s ambitious Print for Libraries project, where the aim is digitize and make available online all works of literature, comes after a heart-string tugging plea from a British hospital for terminally-ill children that receives much of its revenue from its copyright of Peter Pan.

Google has added a feature to its advanced search function allowing the searcher to filter by copyright provisions that allow reuse, sharing, or modifying, and whether the source can be used commercially.

For many companies, the decision to outsource sales is based on the well-established idea that it is better to contract for services that are not within the scope of a company’s true set of competencies.

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy tried an interesting tactic to steer bloggers toward his site on the Internet regarding the two-week old riots in and around Paris. He bought adwords for suburbs and riots (banlieue, emeute) and tried to swing traffic his way.

Speaking at New York’s Ad:Tech conference, SiteLab VP and SEMPO president Dana Todd told an audience SEO gets overlooked despite offering the best return on investment for businesses.

For many years we have heard about the impending death of URLs that are difficult to type, remember and preserve.

Short films like “Boundin’” and “For The Birds,” which appeared at the beginning of full-length Pixar movies, have sold briskly on Apple’s iTunes new video marketplace.

Texan Lynda LeCompte has created an avian flu outbreak add-on for Google Earth mapping out confirmed cases of the bird virus worldwide, contributing to the rash of Google Earth/Maps mash-ups. Get it? Rashoutbreak

An analyst with Classified Intelligence has found a Google patent application for Automat, a system where users can develop and post classified ads.

Big Blue’s Public Image Monitoring Solution will let an enterprise delve into the depths of the web and the murky haze of the blogsphere to find out what people are saying online about a business.

Next week, intellectual heavy hitters from both sides of the Google Print for Libraries debate will be squaring off at the New York Public Library for a “discussion” about the competing interests and issues raised by the project. This could get ugly, and you can see it for as little as $10.