Google to unveil Internet ad tool

Google is expected to unveil a tool that measures Internet use to help advertisers identify the best places to buy ads that will reach its target audience, according to a report on the Wall Street Journal's Web site, says CNET News.com.

The measurement tools, which will be offered free to advertisers and their agencies, will compete with services offered by established leaders Nielsen and ComScore.

While those services base their estimations on selective surveys or customer panels, Google's results would be based on data collected from Web servers, providing a deeper and broader picture of Internet behaviour, the newspaper reported. By giving away the new tool, Google could attract more advertising business.

Dell has added eight more days to the availability of PCs with Windows XP.

The company previously said final orders for XP PCs would be accepted until 18 June, but has now extended the deadline until 26 June, according to TG Daily.

And this time, final means final. As long as you are not buying a Windows Vista PC with a downgrade option (which is available with licences for Vista Business and Vista Ultimate), 26 June will be the last day you can buy a Windows XP PC from Dell.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is getting ready to vote later this week to open up the Internet naming convention to allow more options, reports CNET News.com.

On Thursday, at its meeting in Paris, ICANN, the not-for-profit organisation charged with overseeing the Internet's naming scheme, will vote on a proposal that would allow companies to purchase new generic top-level domains ending in almost anything they want.

So instead of being limited to .com, .org or .co.uk as the last letters of their Web addresses, companies or organisations could add their company name to the end of their URL. For example, eBay could become .ebay or Intel could be .intel. Cities could name their Web sites .newyork or .berlin.

On the back of the release last week of Firefox 3.0, Mozilla's open source browser gained market share at the expense of rivals Internet Explorer (IE) and Safari, Net Applications said today, reports Computerworld.

Firefox's share ended the week at 19.17%, said Vince Vizzaccaro, the Web metrics firm's executive VP of marketing. That's up 0.76% from the 18.41% it posted for May.

Most of that gain came at the expense of Microsoft's IE, but Apple's Safari also dipped last week. IE was down 0.8% from May's final number, to 72.95%, said Vizzaccaro, while Safari was off 0.1%, to 6.15%. Opera Software, which recently unveiled version 9.5 of its flagship browser, was up slightly to 0.75%, from May's 0.71%.