Wednesday Internet Digest

SEARCH:
* Enterprise: MediaNews Group (50 dailies, 121 non-dailies) buys FAST for newspaper site search
* Sponsored: keyword price Dec 05 -2% mom and -16% yoy to average $1.43 (Fathom Online); worldwide market $10 bn in 2005, $14 bn (+41%) in 2006 (Piper Jaffray), 5 yr CAGR 37%
* Click fraud: Sofizar reports vulnerability to Google
* Video: AOL buys Truveo (‘Visual Crawling’, will be integrated)
* Vertical: Become.com (comparison shopping) plans entering Japan in 06H1

COMMERCE:
* Online spending US: 2005 non-travel $82.3 bn (+24%), travel $60.9 bn (+20%); holidays (Nov, Dec) non-travel $19.6 bn (+25%), travel $8.6 bn (+16%) (comScore)
* Online sales Barnesandnoble.com: 2005 $393m (+5.2%), holidays (Oct 29 – Dec 31) $106m (+1.0%)

WEB 2.0:
* Podcasts: BBN Technologies launchews PodZinger search engine out of beta
* About.com (NY Times) adds 3 ‘Guides’

OS, OFFICE, BROWSER:
* OS: Microsoft demos Vista (with Media Player, CableCard), for sale late 2006