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Yesterday and this morning, reports indicated that Yahoo wasn’t having much luck selling its small business unit and HotJobs.  HotJobs has, however, found a new home.  This afternoon, Monster announced that it’s agreed to acquire the property for $225 million, and Monster’s reached a traffic agreement with Yahoo, too.

The agreement will see Monster provide career- and job-related content on Yahoo’s homepages in the U.S. and Canada for three years.  Monster’s also getting the opportunity to negotiate similar agreements with other Yahoo properties worldwide.

Then, according to a press release, there may be "performance based annual payments calculated by clicks and expressions of interest, subject to annual floors and ceilings."  (No further details were given on this front.)

Anyway, Hilary Schneider, Yahoo’s Executive Vice President, explained the sale by stating, "The transaction with Monster enables us to continue to provide an important service to our users through the traffic agreement.  Yahoo! remains focused on its core businesses and delivering exceptional experiences to users, partners and advertisers."

Yahoo and Monster expect to complete the acquisition (and subsequently start the three-year traffic agreement) during the third quarter of this year.

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Google said today it is holding its third annual Doodle 4 Google contest that allows K-12 students in the U.S. to create their own logo for the Google homepage.

The theme this year is "If I Could Do Anything, I Would." Google says along with the winners Doodle appearing on the homepage on May 27, 2010, they will also receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop computer and a $25,000 technology grant for their school.

Google has also put together a panel of expert judges. The Google Blog offers more details. "We’re happy to let you know that this year, we’ve also assembled a panel of well-known ‘Expert Jurors,’ including creative directors, cartoonists and famous animators ranging from Sesame Workshop to Pixar Animation Studios. Our Expert Jurors will help us narrow down the cream of the crop to 40 regional finalists, who will come to the Google office in New York City on May 26, 2010."

"For the second year, we’ll also be partnering with the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where the top 40 regional finalists will get to have their artwork displayed in a national exhibit. And for the first time this year, we’ll give out eight Technology Booster awards to schools that submit maximum number of doodles per school by March 10th and have students in our 400 State Finalists."

Only schoolteachers or administrators can register their schools to participate.  Registration for the Doodle 4 Google contest closes at 11:59 Pacific Time on March 17, 2010, and entries must be submitted by March 31, 2010.

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People who spend large amounts of time on the Internet are more likely to show signs of depression, according to a new study by psychologists from the University of Leeds.

The study found "striking" evidence that some users have developed a compulsive Internet habit in which they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites.

"The Internet now plays a huge part in modern life, but its benefits are accompanied by a darker side," said lead author Dr. Catriona Morrison, from the University of Leeds.

"While many of us use the Internet to pay bills, shop and send emails, there is a small subset of the population who find it hard to control how much time they spend online, to the point where it interferes with their daily activities."

These "Internet addicts" spent proportionately more time browsing sexually gratifying websites, online gaming sites and online communities. They also had a higher incidence of moderate to sever depression than typical users.

"Our research indicates that excessive Internet use is associated with depression, but what we don’t know is which comes first – are depressed people drawn to the internet or does the internet cause depression?" said Dr. Morrison.

"What is clear, is that for a small subset of people, excessive use of the Internet could be a warning signal for depressive tendencies."

The study included the Internet use and depression levels of 1,319 people aged 16-51, and among them, 1.2 percent were classified as being addicted to the Internet.

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The media sector performed well in 2009, recovering $200 billion of value, or 63 percent of what it lost in 2008, online content providers and distributors made up more than half of these gains, according to a new report by consulting firm Oliver Wyman.

The largest gains were in China, where the media sector market value increased by 200 percent. The report indicates that the trend toward online media cannibalizing traditional platforms could push the industry toward a "zero-sum game" and increase the pressure on existing companies to sharpen online strategies.

Online video viewing minutes increased in 2009 by 50% in the U.S. and 30% in Spain, with TV shows and movies accounting for around half of these minutes. "These averages, however, mask the full extent of the change among the subset of the population that watches long-form content online," said Robert C. Fox, a Partner in Oliver Wyman’s Communications, Media, and Technology practice.

"In the U.S., for example, among those who watch long-form video online, 15% of their total long-form viewing is online and their linear TV and DVD viewing decreased in 2009. Similarly among all 18-34 year-olds, a key advertising demographic, all forms of viewing other than online and mobile dropped in 2009."

"The pace of growth in online-video viewing is striking," said Mr. Fox. "However, while the platform is still in its infancy, the behavior of today’s online population suggests that much of this growth will come at the expense of traditional platforms. Video could be headed for a zero-sum game," he added.
 

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Politicians are perhaps not the best people to talk to about privacy; they intentionally thrust themselves into the spotlight, and can be responsible for annoying commercials and phone calls that bother the rest of us at home.  Still, Facebook arguably accomplished something today by discussing privacy with six politicians and the CEO and of the Family Online Safety Institute.

In recognition of Data Privacy Day, Facebook posted quotes from the Chairman of the French Data Protection Commission, the Australian Privacy Commissioner, the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario, and three U.S. representatives (along with the aforementioned CEO).  This demonstrates that Facebook’s at least thinking about privacy.

It also indicates that Facebook is on fairly decent terms with all of these individuals.  Most of the quotes were meaningless and/or self-promotional, and we won’t bore you by repeating even half of them.  But the fact that the politicians supplied them is interesting; you probably wouldn’t find these folks dealing with a company they disliked or considered too controversial.

So a couple of takeaway points might be that Facebook has your best interests at heart and possesses friends in high places. 

As for privacy-related advice, we’ll just relay the words of Stephen Balkam, the Family Online Safety Institute’s CEO.  He wrote that too few people "read privacy policies and set privacy settings.  Data Privacy Day is a good time to think about what information you are revealing about yourself on the web and take the time to talk to kids about the content you are posting and where you are posting it."

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Bing said today it has added new features to make it easier for users to search for and find financial information.

Bing says it has developed a "stock and funds pages" which covers most U.S. stocks and funds.

The Bing Search Blog offers more details. "To see the stocks and funds you are interested in simply enter a ticker in the search box e.g MSFT. Note our ‘Instant Answer’ on top which provides basic data about the firm. If you click on the "Investor Data" tab on the left you go into our finance page."

"The finance page gives you detailed information about key finance metrics of the firm. It also shows an easy to digest summary of the main analyst covering the stock.  A personal favorite of mine are the lists on the left, which allow you to easily navigate to similar stocks or other leading stocks in the industry."

Bing says it plans to add new information and functionality to its stocks and found pages in the future.
 

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Since the widely publicized turbulence between Google and the Chinese government erupted, there has been a lot of speculation about whether or not Google would continue to do business in China in any capacity whatsoever. The company stopped censoring search results in its Chinese search engine, and threatened to pull out of China before it would again do so. Talks between Google and China are expected in the near future.

Based on the latest words from the Chinese government on the matter, Google’s Android business should at least be safe in the country. Ministry of Industry and Information Technology spokesman Zhu Hongren is quoted as saying at a news briefing:

"As long as it complies with Chinese laws and regulations, and as long as it has good cooperation with operators…their use of the system won’t be limited."

The Chinese government has maintained since the incident took place that as long as services comply with Chinese law, they will not block anything. There are still a lot of opportunities for Google to make money in China without the presence of its search engine, and it remains to be seen just which Google will continue to pursue.

The whole situation has been largely murky at best. The U.S. government has been involved because Google has alleged that the Chinese government was involved with the cyber attacks that kicked this whole thing into motion, and the Chinese government has denied any involvement and said that either way it should be viewed as a "business dispute" as opposed to anything that should effect relations between the two countries.

For our past coverage on the Google China situation, browse through our China tag.

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The U.S. remains the largest search market worldwide, while Google holds on to a commanding position in the global search market, according to a new study from comScore.

"The global search market continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, with both highly developed and emerging markets contributing to the strong growth worldwide," said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president.

"Search is clearly becoming a more ubiquitous behavior among Internet users that drives navigation not only directly from search engines but also within sites and across networks. If you equate the advancement of search with the ability of humans to cultivate information, then the world is rapidly becoming a more knowledgeable ecosystem."

The total global search market had more than 131 billion searches conducted by people 15 or older from home and work locations in December 2009, representing a 46 percent increase in the past year.

Broken down, it represents more than 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 29 million per minute. The U.S. is the largest individual search market in the world with 22.7 billion searches, or about 17 percent of searches conducted globally. China landed in the second spot with 13.3 billion searches, followed by Japan with 9.2 billion and the U.K. with 6.2 billion. Among the top ten global search markets, Russia had the biggest gains in 2009, growing 92 percent to 3.3 billion, followed by France (up61% to 5.4 billion) and Brazil (up 53% to 3.8 billion).

Google sites were the top search property worldwide with 87.8 billion searches in December, or 66.8 percent of the global search market. Google sites saw a 58 percent increase in search query volume over the past year. Yahoo sites ranked second globally with 9.4 billion searches (up 13%), followed by Chinese search engine Baidu with 8.5 billion searches (up 7%).

Microsoft sites saw the largest gains among the top five properties, growing 70 percent to 4.1 billion searches, on the strength of its new search engine Bing. Russian search engine Yandex also saw solid gains, growing 91 percent to 1.9 billion searches.
 

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These are early days and in the coming weeks we’ll also invite a small group of partners across other industries, in addition to independent film, to participate in this new option. Anything that brings more content to the YouTube community is a good thing. And making content available for rent will give our partners unprecedented control over the distribution of their work — they can decide the price of their videos and the rental duration; they can decide when and where their content is available; and they can keep 100% of their rights.

The videos will cost around $5 but the exact price will be set by individual filmmakers. Coverage from USA Today mentions that YouTube will split revenues, but will give the lion’s share to the filmmaker.

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Publishers could be losing between $2.75- 3 billion due to online book piracy, according to a new report from Attributor.

Attributor’s FairShare Guardian service monitored 913 popular books in 14 categories in the fourth quarter of 2009.  FairShare tracked the number of successful downloads completed for each of the 913 titles on four file sharing sites that make download data available (4shared.com, scribd.com, wattpad.com and docstoc.com). Across those four sites, a total of 3.2 million downloads took place.

Across the top 25 one-click hosting sites a total download figure of over 9 million copies was projected with an estimated loss of $380 million. Each book’s retail price and category information was collected from Amazon.com.

Among the 14 book categories tracked, piracy was most common in the business and investing category with an average of 13,000 free downloads per title. The professional and technical category trailed followed by science, computer and Internet.

The 913 titles in this study represents works from publishers totaling 13.5 percent of the U.S. book publishing market. Projecting the $380 million value to the entire industry results in total potential piracy of $2.8 billion.
 

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