Microsoft abandons 'Scroogled' campaign (updated)

Just because Microsoft is moving beyond its rather nasty anti-Google campaign doesn't necessarily mean the campaign was a flop.

FORTUNE -- Microsoft is reportedly abandoning its highly negative anti-Google campaign, "Scroogled." It's hard to know whether the decision has anything to do with the immense backlash that occurred in the media, because the campaign wasn't working, or both.

The campaign darkly asserted that Google (GOOG) is monitoring your private emails—which it is, but MORE

Why Do Not Track faces an uphill road

'Do Not Track' sounds a lot like 'Do Not Call.' But unlike telemarketing, online ad-tracking takes place unobtrusively, behind the scenes.

FORTUNE -- Legislation to give Internet users the right to prevent advertisers from tracking their online activities was re-introduced in the Senate on Thursday. It has little chance of passing.

The proposed Do Not Track Online Act sounds a lot like the very popular federal Do Not Call legislation that was MORE

What is a PC now?

Changes in mobile technology and touchscreens are scrambling the old definition of the personal computer.

FORTUNE -- The question "What is a PC?" has been bemusing analysts and industry observers since long before the introduction of the iPad -- but especially since. The answer is not so simple. In some ways, it's a question of mere rhetoric. But when it comes to analyzing markets and companies, it becomes a lot more MORE

How Billboard saved the music video

Adding YouTube to Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart almost guarantees that record companies will try even harder to force songs to go viral.

FORTUNE -- The "observer effect" is present in media just as it is in physics: The act of observing (or measuring) something always affects the thing being observed. In the case of Billboard adding YouTube videos to its Hot 100 chart of top singles, that means that even MORE

A new kerfuffle behind Microsoft's anti-Google campaign

To advance its surprisingly negative "Scroogled" campaign against Google, Microsoft is directing people to Care2, a petition site aimed at "making the world a better place." Care2 is reconsidering its terms of service.

FORTUNE -- The main reaction to Microsoft's "Scroogled" ad campaign against Google has been surprise at the level of negativity. "Fearmongering," The Verge calls it.

The campaign tells Internet users that they're being "scroogled" by Google's practice of "reading" data MORE

Bit by bit, Marissa Mayer's Yahoo strategy gets clearer

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is sticking to her message that services are No. 1, and she's confident that the company can capitalize on the shift to mobile.

FORTUNE -- It's hard to blame Marissa Mayer for speaking in platitudes and vagaries, though she's now seven months into her reign as Yahoo's CEO. With apparently successful revamps of both email and the Flickr photo service already under her belt, she's now focused on strategies MORE

Why email spam is on the decline

Spam is down. And many former spammers are migrating to legit channels on the Web.

FORTUNE -- Those weird little ads on the right side of your Facebook page—the ones depicting ugly shoes or pitching iffy continuing education degrees—are partly the result of the changing economics of both spam and online advertising in general.

Email spam became a huge business—and a huge problem for both Internet users and network managers—because marginal costs MORE

Monopoly is killing the trusty iron

The iron, along with the thimble and the other original Monopoly tokens originated with, of all things, a trade magazine for the laundry business.

FORTUNE -- Few Monopoly players choose the iron. I always did. Maybe it was a bid to stand out in my large family. But I was an exception, and the iron never did find wide favor outside we few contrarians. Now the iron is being tossed onto MORE

Are Apple users superior?

Do Apple's mobile devices lead in the U.S. because of technological elitism? Of course not.

FORTUNE -- Veteran tech journalist Dan Lyons is the newly installed editor-in-chief of ReadWrite. Perhaps as a way of drawing new attention to the site, he published a diatribe on Tuesday in which he explained away Apple's (AAPL) leadership of the U.S. mobile-device market as being a result of class bigotry. Apple leads because people buy MORE

What happens if the price of music falls to zero?

Nobody knows for sure how the music business will work in 5 or 10 years. But underlying all the confusion is a stark fact: the market price of recorded music is falling.

FORTUNE -- Shares of Pandora fell on Tuesday and stayed down after Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter downgraded the music-streamer's stock from "outperform" to "neutral." Shares were recovering slightly on Wednesday morning. Pachter cited competition from Apple's reportedly forthcoming MORE