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Google's lead for users is larger outside U.S.

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Google was used for 80 percent of Web searches in France in April among Web-surfers who used the three largest search engines, according to research firm ComScore Networks. Google had a 77 percent market share in the U.K. and 70 percent in Canada, the report said. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company was used in the U.S. for 44 percent of searches.

Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN Internet unit are competing to sell advertisements that appear next to search results. Google's larger audience outside the U.S. may help it win a bigger share of advertising in regions where sales are growing more quickly, analysts said.

"If you have the audience, advertisers will follow," said Charlene Li, an analyst with Forrester Research in San Francisco. "The growth rate is going to be higher definitely because it's coming off a smaller base. The marketers haven't come on board as quickly as in the U.S."

Google, which is controlled by founders Sergey Brin, 30, and Larry Page, 31, has said it will raise $2.72 billion later this year with an initial public stock offering.

Yahoo! spokeswoman Joanna Stevens declined to immediately comment and MSN representatives didn't immediately return a phone call for comment.

Internet
Vacation essential: having online access

Internet users are so hooked on the technology that they can't go without it for even a week. That's what Nielsen/Net Ratings says, based on a survey of 500 households with online access.

Seven out of every 10 respondents said they're bringing a laptop or other Net-enabled device along on their next vacation. Many are doing so because they're also bringing digital cameras on the trip, or plan to send e-mails instead of postcards.

Half the surveyed people said they based their choice of hotels on the availability of high-speed connectivity.

The Web is also an essential outlet for travel planning: two-thirds of travelers say they will check the Web while they are on vacation, and three-fourths say they plan to do at least some of their vacation research online — especially price comparisons and maps.
 
Internet
AOL's messaging has business version

America Online just unveiled a business version of its instant-messaging software. The additional bells and whistles in this version include voice and video conferencing, with Lightbridge powering the former and WebEx Communications powering the latter. The resulting product runs full-fledged online meetings.

AOL is zeroing in on the business space for all the right reasons. The company commissioned a study by Osterman Research that found that 24 million instant-messaging users log on from work, and 14 million of them use AOL to do so.

With the new business service, meeting organizers don't have to call ahead to reserve a conference line. All they need to do is send instant messages inviting people to join the online meeting, and voilà.

Telecommunications
Nokia's new phone knocked down early

Soothsayers who've previewed Nokia's newest mobile phone say it's a dud. There couldn't be a more inconvenient time for this to happen, since the company has been losing market share.

The company owned 28.9 percent of the market in the first quarter of this year, down from 34.6 percent during the same time last year.

The dud in question was supposed to be Nokia's first stab at a mainstream flip-phone with a voice-activated music player. Just last year, the company had called such a model a commodity, and now it's playing catch-up.

Internet
Blogger's observations get mainstream play

SAN DIEGO - Online journals are routinely disparaged or ignored as unworthy of any medium beyond electrons.

Not Brian Dear's. The San Diego Reader, a free newsweekly, is publishing 8,000 words from his blog this week — as its cover story.

"As far as I know, this is a first," Dear boasted on his site this week.

Well, not quite.

The Reader profiled another San Diego blogger for its April 29 cover story, lifting long excerpts from her site.

Editor Jim Holman says he is fascinated by the rise of online journals, calling the writing "less guarded and less prepared than regular journalism."

Holman concedes that blogs can veer toward the self-absorbed and esoteric but he found Dear to be an engaging writer.

Dear, who has worked for several Internet companies and is now looking to start one of his own, launched his site in February 2002, dishing up observations on everything from politics to advertising.

It's at brianstorms.com, and includes an image of his $2,000 check from the Reader.

Telecommunications
Primus offers cheaper Internet phone service

The battle is on to see who can offer the cheapest Internet phone service. The latest entrant into the space is Primus Communications, a maker of customer-relationship management software. The new service is free for the first three months, and then $19.95 a month.

This is cheaper than the competition. AT&T charges $19.95 for the first six months (North America only) and $39.99 per month after that. Smaller rival Vonage asks for $29.99 a month.

AT&T had started offering the service this March, prompting Vonage to reduce its prices. It has yet to be seen whether these two will react in a similar fashion to Primus.

Internet
High-speed access in nearly all ZIP codes

NEW YORK - The number of high-speed Internet lines in the United States increased 42 percent last year, and service now is available in all but 7 percent of the nation's ZIP codes.

In a semiannual report, the Federal Communications Commission said 28.2 million homes and businesses had high-speed lines. Cable modems made up 58 percent and DSL 34 percent.

Most of the country had choice. Seventy-eight percent of the nation's ZIP codes had at least two companies providing service; 11 percent had 10 or more (serving a ZIP code does not necessarily mean it is available to everyone in that region).

But 7 percent of the ZIP codes had no high-speed service at all. The figure exceeded 20 percent for South Dakota and West Virginia, and 15 percent for Arkansas, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota.

Internet
Marketers ignoring new anti-spam law

Apparently, the new anti-spam law isn't doing much good. Only one out of every 100 e-mail marketers complies with the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, known as CAN-SPAM, which went into effect this January.

Compliance actually rose to 3 percent in April, only to slide back in May.

Makers of anti-spam software say these statistics prove the need for technological protection against unsolicited mailings. In fact, the above figures were supplied by MX Logic, which sells e-mail filtering tools.

Internet
Beatles' songs may get online distribution

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have finally given in to peer pressure. The two are negotiating with online music sites for the right to distribute Beatles songs, something the group's two surviving members had been resisting until now.

The lead contender for the contract is Microsoft's MSN, which is planning to launch an online music store later this year to compete with Apple's iTunes, the service that dominates the market.

Compiled from Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services, The Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg News