About.com - Sold to the New York Times

The New York Times announced today that it will purchase About.com for $410 million from publisher Primedia. The Times, whose newspapers include The New York Times and The Boston Globe, said it will expand About.com's content and visibility and use the site to market its products and those of its advertisers. I hope this will turn out to be good news for the Web site editors, and all of my other friends at About.com. I am thinking about you guys!

NY Times Explains About.com Purchase To Analysts

Associated Press Article by Seth Sutel

Kanoodle is Battling Google for Contextual Ads

The former executives of Sprinks, which Google purchased in October of 2003, joined smaller paid-search provider Kanoodle in 2004 and they are renewing their competition in the market for contextual ads [Article at eWeek.com]

Will Google Buy About.com?

Some of you may know I was the inline skating editor for About.com for four years, from 1999 through 2003. About.com is about to undergo a significant change, because Primedia is selling it off to the highest bidder. AOL, Google, and Yahoo are among the five companies expected to bid by today's deadline. I have a good relationship with About.com management and their new inline skating editor, so I am very curious to find out who the new owner will be. [Read Full Article]

Google Inviting Gmailers 50 at a Time

Is Google gearing up for a full launch of Gmail in the near future? According to a Recent article cNet article: "...people using the Gmail service have found recently that the number of invitations they can send out has increased from four to 50." [Read Full Article at Com.com]