Google has agreed to acquire Adscape, a company that puts ads inside of video games, for $23 million. Google had missed out on Massive, a company Microsoft picked up for $200-400 million about a year ago, and is going to have to settle for the much smaller Adscape, which it will have to build into a bigger player. Judging by Google’s great success with dMarc, I’d assume nothing at this point.

I come across a lot of good articles each week that I never get to mention, so I thought I’d join some of the other bloggers in the seo community and offer a few links. I’ve hesitated to do this in the past, because I imagine you’ll already have seen some of these, but I decided to give it a shot and see how it goes.

Social networking site Gather.com has partnered with three publishers and a record label to provide exclusive content for the site. The partners are Harvard Health Publications, Publishers Weekly, McGraw-Hill Professional and Columbia Records.

Somewhere at the top of the Silicon Valley, Craigslist has upset the status quo of publishing; only the most dedicated websites can survive the hazardous venture into the Valley and face down the Colonel Kurtz of online classifieds.

The headline may sound a little harsh, but based on their recent Adsense policy updates as noted by Jensense, it’s the conclusion that has to be made.

One of the most repeated terms added to the new web 2.0 glossary describing current trends in web design is “user generated content.”

An expressed desire for better indexing from Google News has prompted Google to release a Sitemaps product specifically for those news publishers.

The French Publishers Association (SNE) has joined a lawsuit targeting the Google Book Search service. The group’s objections stem from its interpretation of intellectual property laws. It also – this is not a joke – objects to the way in which Google depicts search results as “ragged-edged” pieces of paper.

Motions for summary judgments in Authors Guild v Google have been delayed at Google’s request, and will not be filed until January 2008.

After Google did a lot of foot-stomping, breath-holding, and tongue-sticking in Belgium over the demands of Copiepresse newspaper publishers, MSN is trying to play nice with Belgian critics. As usual, Microsoft tests the waters by letting somebody else go first.

Some ado was made recently about Google AdSense sensitivity filters blocking revenue-generating ads based on the nature of the content, and replacing those spots with public service announcements. There is additional concern that publishers will refrain from hard-hitting content to protect that revenue. We got in touch with Google to their side of it.

The news search engine has shifted to marketing its services to publishers, and has landed the Washington Post and Huffington Post as early partners.

Blogger seems to have finally provided publishers with an RSS 2.0 feed.

The Web as an advertising medium is vastly underexploited in light of a unique new study revealing that Web usage dominates all other media in daily use. Additionally, the study found, chronic Web surfers tend to spend more freely than TV watchers.

Microsoft announced the beta release of its Windows Live Academic Search service in seven countries, and focused the search service on conducting research across a spectrum of academic journals.

With the growing popularity of podcasting, publishers and marketers around the world are asking themselves how to monetize this content channel and make delivering audio content via RSS profitable.

Google’s explanation about Ford Explorer ads showing up on numerous sites with no automotive-related content said it’s all about the impressions.

At what point has the music industry’s fierce guarding of it’s content gone too far? And how far does Fair Use protect Google as it seeks to index the world’s information? The biggest blow-out of the year was between Google and publishers over the Google Book Search project. The next big blow-out may land Google in the sights of the music industry after the search company launched a music lyrics search function.

The growth and acceptance of search engines posed a conundrum to sites like the Wall Street Journal, and they still see a need for a more effective business model.

A live blogger at last night’s “intellectual law smackdown” featuring Google, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Wired Magazine captured the rancorous debate about Google Book Search.

Feeling that the name would cause confusion, the folks in charge of the Google Print program have changed the name of the program to Google Book Search.