Jerry Yang’s departure as Yahoo! CEO opens the door to a renewed bid by Microsoft to buy Yahoo!’s search business (or Yahoo! itself). Such a merger could produce a significantly stronger challenger to Google in the search market. With this possibility in mind, the WSJ just ran a fascinating history of the “paid search” business—the placement [...]
The Progress & Freedom Foundation has just launched the new Center for Internet Freedom. CIF offers an alternative to the proliferation of advocacy groups calling for government intervention online by offering timely analyses and critiques of proposals that diminish the vital role of free markets, free speech and property rights. We aim to drive the Internet policy [...]
By Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer Progress Snapshot 4.19 (PDF) Since the fall of 2008, a debate has raged in Washington over “targeted online advertising,” an ominous-sounding shorthand for the customization of Internet ads to match the interests of users. Not only are these ads more relevant and therefore less annoying to Internet users than [...]