St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Go ahead and add some video, sound or flash to those web sites. Just about everyone has hi-speed internet access now. Ok maybe not, the percentage of high speed users in America is still less than half (only 42%). This is a pitiful number when compared to the rest of the developed world. America is ranked at #12 in the percentage of high speed users according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s most recent rankings.

U.S. high-speed Internet subscriptions soared 33 percent last year to 50.2 million lines, according to the latest data released by the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday.

An estimated 42 percent of Americans had high-speed Internet access at home in March 2006, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That was up from 30 percent of Americans with high-speed access one year earlier, it said.

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Google Inc. said Tuesday that it plans to be more transparent with advertisers about a problem known as click fraud, reversing a policy of secrecy that left many advertisers in the dark about whether they were victims of scammers.

Starting late Tuesday night, Google was to start giving advertisers an estimate of the number and percentage of invalid clicks on individual accounts over a day, week, quarter and year.

Google said the numbers will go a long way to help advertisers determine the scope of the click fraud. Previously, to get an estimate of invalid clicks, advertisers had to examine their internal logs or hire a third-party measurement company.

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The music and movie industries have reached a legal settlement with their longtime antagonist Kazaa, one of the world’s best known file-sharing networks and a once-popular source of illicit downloads. Under the terms of the deal, Kazaa’s owner Sharman Networks will pay the world’s four major music companies — Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner Music — more than $100 million and commit to going legitimate, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. “There are very substantial damages being paid — in excess of $100 million — and Kazaa will go legal immediately . . .”

This settelment raises two questions right away:

   
1. What do they mean by going legitimate?

   

2. Does installing spyware on peoples computers really pay that much?

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Doesn’t make much sense does it? But wait, maybe it does . . .
Read the Full story at Search Engine Watch