Brian Morrissey

Yahoo! announced Tuesday that Tim Koogle, the company’s first chief executive, would step down from his board seat next month. The company said Koogle would relinquish his seat on the board of directors to focus on his other business interests. Yahoo! nominated ad exec Roy Bostock to replace him. Koogle’s departure leaves Jerry Yang as […]

DoubleClick returned to profitability with its first-quarter results Tuesday, after spending a painful year recasting its business. The company, which jettisoned its media business to focus on technology tools, reported a $1.4 million profit for the quarter on $60.1 million of revenue. While the revenue figure was down from last year’s first quarter, the profit […]

Anti-spam company Habeas said on Tuesday it had dropped its legal complaint against affiliate network ClickBank for aiding spammers. Habeas CEO Anne Mitchell said the company reached a “cooperative understanding” that cleared up the claims that ClickBank helped spammers violate its trademark. Earlier this month, Habeas filed suit against marketers Stan Stuchinski and Dale Heller, […]

Paid search company FindWhat announced on Tuesday the availability of a new tool allowing its advertisers to automatically optimize their keyword bids. With AutoBid, advertisers enter the maximum bid amount they are willing to pay for a keyword. The tool then finds the best position for the bid in the FindWhat network, charging a penny […]

America Online has expanded its legal assault on unsolicited commercial bulk e-mail flooding its 27 million members’ in-boxes, filing a handful of lawsuits against spammers the company says are responsible for 8 million customer complaints. The five suits are against 12 companies and individuals and seek a total of $10 million in damages. They are […]

A Kansas businessman was awarded $500 in damages by a small-claims court for receiving an unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail, marking the first test of that state’s 9-month-old anti-spam law. Jerry Weinstock, a Kansas City area e-mail marketer and anti-spam activist, sued Naperville, Ill.-based Market Advantage Consulting for $1,000 in damages for sending him an unsolicited […]

Overture Services gave new details on its ambitious international expansion plans on Monday, as the company seeks to steal a march on Google in the nascent paid search market abroad. The paid search company, which has been under fire with the success of rival Google, said it would enter seven new markets this year, beginning […]

U.S. Senators introduced a bill designed to crack down on the growing problem of unsolicited bulk e-mail on Thursday, giving further evidence that a federal role in combating spam is inevitable. Montana Sen. Conrad Burns and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden are co-sponsors of the bill, which is largely similar to acts they introduced in previous […]

eDiets Shifts Business Model Online weight-loss company eDiets announced on Thursday it would shift its business model from offering only its own diets to offering a variety of diets. When the move becomes official next Wednesday, eDiets hopes to differentiate itself from weight-loss pioneer Weight Watchers, which has operated weight-loss centers for four decades, by […]

Terra Lycos said on Thursday it would use DoubleClick’s Ensemble campaign-management platform to market its paid services to its users. The international portal said Ensemble’s data discovery and business analysis features would give it an automated platform for convincing its users to try its premium services. The company has pegged fee-based services as an important […]

Overture Services inked a three-year deal with controversial adware company Gator to provide paid listings on its Search Scout service, which serves pop-under ads when users visit search engines like Google. For example, when a user of Gator software visits Google and searches for “antiques,” a Search Scout pop-under featuring Overture listings is triggered. (The […]

Maryland anti-spam activist Francis Uy claimed victory in his quest to out a Maryland man he says is responsible for huge quantities of unsolicited bulk e-mail, after winning a court case related to his posting of the man’s personal information on his Web site. George Moore, a Linthicum, Md., resident, accused Uy of harassment for […]