The International Herald Tribune reveals that “

[h]aving nearly tripled its audience and added about 20,000 new applications over the past year, the popular online hangout Facebook is about to undergo a housecleaning.  Visitors who cannot stand the clutter that has been piling up will be glad to see that the site’s new look sweeps disparate bits of information into categories marked by tabs at the top of each user’s customized home page.  Basic personal background and interests will be filed under an ‘info’ tab, for instance, while news about users’ buddies’ latest activities will land under a ‘feed’ tab, pictures will be corralled in a ‘photo’ section and applications will be easily located under a ‘programs’ tab. That content is now scattered, creating a confusing mishmash that has frustrated some Facebook users.  The facelift, in the works since January, is to debut in June.”

The Sidney Morning Herald reports that “Google extended its U.S. lead in web search in April, taking market share from rivals Yahoo and Microsoft, according to industry data released on Thursday.  Market research firm comScore said Google’s core web search properties captured a record-high 61.6 per cent of the U.S. market in April, up from 59.8 per cent in March.”

According to the MercuryNews, “[o]nline shopping revenue reached $260 billion in 2007, up from $220 billion in 2006. But that represents only 5 percent to 7 percent of total retail sales.  Two-thirds (66 percent) of online users say they have purchased a product online, such as a book, toy, music or clothing.  78 percent of Internet users either agree (53 percent) or agree strongly (25 percent) that shopping online is convenient for them.  68 percent of Internet users either agree (47 percent) or agree strongly (21 percent) that online shopping saves them time.”

In a different article, the Mercury News points out that “[t]he lack of high-speed Internet access in some areas of the United States has been hotly debated, even as that digital divide has narrowed. But a new, wider gap is being created by technology that will make today’s broadband feel as slow as a dial-up connection.  Much like broadband-enabled downloads of music, video and work files that weren’t practical over dial-up, the next generation of Internet connections will allow for vivid, lifelike video conferencing and new kinds of interactive games.   But while access to cable and phone-line broadband has spread to cover perhaps 90 percent of the country in the space of a decade, next-generation Internet access looks set to create a much smaller group of ‘haves’ and a larger group of ‘have nots.’  The most promising route to super-fast home broadband is to extend the fiber-optic lines that already form the Internet’s backbone all the way to homes.  The build-out of FTTH is under way In the United States, but it’s highly concentrated in the 17-state service area of Verizon Communications, the only major U.S. phone company replacing its copper lines with fiber.”

The Seattle Times writes that “[a] former European Union judge who presided over Microsoft’s appeal of an EU antitrust ruling said he was ‘surprised’ at the magnitude of a subsequent 899 million euro ($1.4 billion) antitrust fine against the company.  The European Commission levied the penalty in February against Microsoft after the company failed to comply with the 2004 ruling. The fine brought the total penalty against Microsoft to 1.68 billion euros.  ‘I was surprised with the size of the fine,’ Bo Vesterdorf told journalists after speaking at a conference in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Vesterdorf retired as president of the European Court of First Instance last September after the tribunal upheld the commission’s ruling that Microsoft abused its dominance in personal computer-operating systems.  He said in a speech that Microsoft should have appealed the EU court’s ruling to the European Court of Justice to ensure more clarity on how intellectual-property rights are treated.”