A federal judge approved a settlement where Yahoo has agreed to extend its period where it will review claims of so called "click fraud" back to January 2004. Yahoo's old policy only reviewed such claims within 60 days. Additionally, the company will pay $5 million in legal fees.

The settlement could also release the company from any liability in another click fraud suit, brought by Arkansas online retailer Lane's Gift's & Collectibles, LLC against Google. Yahoo was named as a defendant in that case.

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Microsoft said Thursday morning that it had made available the third beta of Internet Explorer 7, the final beta before the browser ships later this year ahead of Windows Vista. Microsoft said that while the second beta was "feature complete," Beta 3 does include some enhancements.

"Throughout the development of Internet Explorer 7 Microsoft has encouraged and listened to customer feedback," a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews. "As a result of customer feedback, IE7 Beta 3 contains some feature changes in addition to the planned reliability, compatibility and security improvements."

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Net neutrality was dealt a bitter defeat late Wednesday, after a Senate committee rejected a Democratic amendment to add statutes to communications legislation by a 11-to-11 tie. The effort would have ensured that all traffic would be handled equally, say supporters.

It is now unclear if net neutrality will be able to recover, as efforts have suffered defeats in both houses of Congress. While Democrats and Internet companies say not including the rules could create a "two-tier Internet," Republicans have sided with the telecommunications industry saying the laws are needless regulation.

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Microsoft announced more changes to its business structure late Wednesday, moving around several executives. The most significant move is Orlando Ayala, who will move from senior vice president of small and medium business sales to a position overseeing the company's effort in emerging markets. Eduardo Rosini will assume Alaya's old position, moving from the company's Asia-Pacific division.

Marketing for the company's new communications initiative would be headed by Chris Capossela, who already leads the marketing unit for Office. In product line changes, the Microsoft Dynamics product will be moved from Microsoft Business Solutions group to Kurt DelBene's Office Business platform unit.

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Google on Thursday launched its highly-anticipated payments service, dubbing it Google Checkout. While at first glance, the Mountain View, Calif. company's new offering may look to compete with PayPal directly, it differs from the popular payment services in a few key ways.

Instead of acting as a depository for funds, Google Checkout aims to speed the checkout process by acting as a method to send personal and financial information to participating merchants. The customer does not need to enter any information in order to make purchases.

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MTV said that it will bring content from six of its networks to the iTunes Music Store Thursday. The company had made content from its Comedy Central network available earlier this year, and said "South Park" had sold over one million videos alone.

With the addition of the new networks from MTV, iTunes would now give access to over 150 shows. 35 million videos have been sold since the company began offering the service late last year. In addition, Apple announced that the iTunes Music Store now offers over 9,000 music videos and three million songs from major and independent labels.

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Verizon Wireless said Wednesday that it would prorate the so-called "early termination fee," allowing those customers closer to the end of their contract to cancel their account at a cheaper rate than previously possible. Under the old plan, no matter at what point in their contract, the customer would have to pay a $175 fee. Now, the fee would be prorated proportionally to the time left on the contract.

The change will be applied in the Fall both for new customers and existing customers who sign a new contract. The change is not expected to affect the carrier's bottom line; Verizon has one of the highest customer retention rates of any U.S. wireless service. As well as changing the cancellation fee policy, Verizon also announced Wednesday a new plan allowing existing customers to qualify for the same phone discounts offered to new customers.

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Microsoft on Wednesday rolled out a beta version of its new "digital locker" technology, which will be integrated into an upcoming version of the Windows Marketplace Web site. The digital locker enables users to purchase and download software from a variety of different vendors directly through Microsoft.

The digital locker was designed to give customers a single page for controlling their personal information and purchase history, allowing them to instantly see what software licenses they own. Microsoft is offering programs from the libraries of Digital River, eSellerate, Handango and Kagi, but will not support independent ISVs. Credit card charges will be handled by Microsoft's delivery partners, the company said.

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Hoping to stem the growing tide of identity theft, a wide-ranging coalition that includes corporations, government agencies, and academia came together Wednesday to form the Center for Identity Management and Information Protection.

According to the mission of the coalition, the CIMIP hopes to "facilitate a national research agenda on identity fraud and theft, information sharing policy, and data protection."

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Vonage is expected to unveil a new device as early as Wednesday that would allow the user to turn any computer into a phone by attaching a USB memory drive preloaded with voice over IP software. The company today held an event for press in New York City.

When the device, called the V-Phone, is plugged in to the computer, the software would automatically launch. Vonage isn't the first to offer such capabilities, as several companies are already marketing similar products.

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Microsoft on Wednesday released Beta 1 of Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP x64 edition. The single update will cover both operating systems, along with the R2 release of Server 2003. A standalone SP2 beta package is available in 32-bit, 64-bit and Itanium flavors in English, German and Japanese.

"Service Pack 2 is a conventional service pack consisting of all security updates, all individual hotfixes released to customers and fixes to reduce top customer support issues as well as increase reliability, robustness, and security. Service Pack 2 is the first Service Pack for Windows XP x64 Professional SKU," Microsoft said in an e-mail to beta testers.

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The Senate approved an amendment to a bill late Tuesday that would require Web site owners who include sexual content to place warning labels alerting vistors to the material. Failure to do so could result in a felony conviction with possible jail terms of up to five years.

A rating system would also be created by the Federal Trade Commission that would also be placed on sites with sexual content. Supporters of the bill say that such a procedure would prevent children from seeing indecent material inadvertently.

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Adobe on Wednesday released the final version of Flash Player 9, which the company says offers ten times better performance through ActionScript 3.0 and a new ActionScript Virtual Machine. The update provides the backbone for Flex 2.0, Adobe's new line of development tools.

The new releases are intended to promote the use of Flash in next-generation Web applications. While AJAX is garnering much of the spotlight, Flash is finding its way into a number of services, including Yahoo! Maps, Google Finance and Goowy Web mail.

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Microsoft said late Tuesday that its Custom Domains service had officially launched, making it the third Windows Live project to come out of beta. The service allows a customer to use a custom domain name with Windows Live Mail and Hotmail.

Windows Live Custom Domains is a free service, just like other Live offerings from the company. Additionally, with the final debut, Microsoft has launched a new feature called "open membership."

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IBM said Wednesday that the company built 243 computers on the list of the world's top 500 supercomputers in the world. However, the bigger story may be AMD's continued rise in the rankings. While AMD processors are only in 81 supercomputers, that 's up dramatically from 25 last year.

Intel processor-based systems are down over the same period, from 333 to 301. Similarly, the Itanium processor has continued to become less relevant, falling from 79 last year to 37 systems as of the current report. Intel has been locked in a tight battle with AMD over the past year, and has seen its market share fall in desktops, laptops and now servers.

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