New York -- With accomplishment comes’ set-back, and Facebook is facing a similar situation -- initiated a long legal battle to pursue social networks that have cloned their design or features by suing German site StudiVZ.

Facebook lawyers on Friday filed a complaint in a California Federal Court, accusing StudiVz, a German social networking site which has 10 million users, of copying the look, feel, features and services of Facebook and seeks “to end StudiVZ’s illegal activity” lest Facebook’s own reputation be harmed by association.

New York -- Oft-rumored acquisition target, video search provider Blinkx, sharpened its defense and offense against a possible buyout from Google or Yahoo, on Wednesday said it has signed new pacts with several major online partners, one of which happens to be owned by Microsoft.

Blinkx launched its latest video search service in the form of “Red Label,” a syndication service that allows customers to integrate its search results and make money from videos indexed by Blinkx on their sites.

New York -- Internet radio attained a bigger boost Monday as nine more radio groups joined TargetSpot, an ad sales network serving online radio broadcasters.

TargetSpot, Inc. recently made addition to its nationwide portfolio of top nine radio and internet broadcasters and shows seeking to garner into the streaming media advertising market.

Bangalore, India -- Intel India on Monday introduced an online storefront and business solution Web portal (http://bxindia.intel.com), designed to cater the needs for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

According to the company, The Intel Business Exchange (Intel BX) collectively provide resources and platform solutions built on Intel technology, such as bundled software and hardware, stand-alone business applications and services to create a one-stop shopping experience for SMB customers.

“Witnesses include execs from rival Microsoft, as well as Yahoo and Google.”

San Francisco -- An antitrust official at the U.S. Department of Justice has ordered an inquiry to review the search advertising deal between Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., and the company will take a couple of jibes at Microsoft Corp. in the process, according to a person familiar with the investigations.

The subject matter of the inquiry before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights is: “The Google-Yahoo Agreement and the Future of Internet Advertising.” The meeting will be held tomorrow at 10:30 a.m.

San Francisco -- The US Justice Department’s antitrust division said that it has formally begun an antitrust inquiry into a planned Google-Yahoo deal reached last month that would authorize Internet behemoth Google to provide some search advertising for Yahoo, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.

“We are examining the competitive effects of the transaction and how it affects consumers,” department spokeswoman Gina Talamona, said in a statement.

Searching multimedia is tremendously difficult with search engines, and Flash content has been no exception, until now. Adobe, Google and Yahoo have teamed up to add lively Web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs) to search results.

Adobe Systems Inc. on Tuesday announced a new initiative with both Google and Yahoo to improve the accuracy of searches for Flash (.SWF) files by delivering an optimized version of its ubiquitous player. But there still is a long way to go.

Publicis Groupe Launches Digital Advertising Plan

New York - As Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL scuttle to build comprehensive ad platforms; French media consultancy Publicis Groupe has reorganized its digital technology platform in concert with major Internet players to make it easier for companies to more effectively navigate the current interactive landscape dominated by such technology giants.

New York -- The world’s largest handset maker Nokia is buying the remainder of Symbian, the consortium that makes the software for its phones and making it available for free to other manufacturers, for $410 million and opening the popular mobile-phone platform through the Symbian Foundation to challenge Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Open Windows and even Apple, Inc.’s iPhone with cheaper smartphones.

Nokia said Tuesday that it has made a cash offer to buy the 52% of Britain’s Symbian that it does not already possess. The Finnish mobile phone giant is willing to pay $410 million for the Symbian’s software as it is widely used on most high-end cell phones today, in hopes of blunting the influence of competing software providers.

Helsinki -- Finnish handset maker Nokia on Monday moved to beef up its mobile navigation and social networking start-up business to its portfolio Monday by acquiring Plazes AG, a smaller rival to services like Twitter and Jaiku -- as part of the world’s top mobile phone maker’s push into offering Internet services for an undisclosed sum.

Presently in beta, the Berlin-based Plazes, developer of a social-networking Web site allows friends locate and update their locations and activities using either Plazes software or by sending text messages.

“Project Echo will revolutionize the magnitude to which developers can integrate with eBay.”

Open source has made a considerable effect on the “offline” world of packaged software, and perhaps having more important consequences on the web world.

Beijing -- Popular online social networking site Facebook.com has announced a simplified Chinese version of its website targeting mainland Chinese Web surfers in an attempt to compete with local and overseas rivals in the world’s largest Internet market.

Facebook and Chinese IM (instant messaging) admirer Tencent appear ready to join the battle for China’s social net-workers, as both have launched Chinese sites recently.

“Volunteers will offer free translation to users.”

“Latest search figure shows further decline for Redmond.”

Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. both gained the edge on Microsoft in the battle moderately expanded their share of the U.S. online search market in May, spelling more bad news for Microsoft after the Yahoo deal breakdown: according to forecasts released by ComScore Inc. Thursday.

“Fine less than expected -- Colorado firm to pay damages, legal fees.”

After a long drawn legal battle that started in January 2007, between self-styled “Spam King” Scott Richter and News Corp.’s social networking property MySpace, has finally reached an agreement to receive its claimed retributions.

Frankfurt -- eBay’s web phone division Skype, on Wednesday started a public testing of VoIP software’s latest version for making free or low-cost phone calls that intends to encourage casual video chatting more common.

It has been a long time since Skype has received a major, often-demanded upgrade: Skype 4.0. President Josh Silverman calls it the “biggest new release in Skype’s history.” The company will issue the first of several planned version 4.0 beta builds (for Windows only) that are anticipated to drop over the next few months.

“Now the barrier between two previously inaccessible territories of online chat is coming down.”

New York -- Just last week Google and Yahoo agreed on a search advertising deal to be run on some of their search result pages in USA and Canada. In addition, the two companies also “agreed to allow interoperability between their respective instant-messaging services, bringing easier and broader communication to users,” the companies said Thursday.

MySpace Is Poised To Release Major Site Redesign

“News Corp. is accelerating its efforts to wring more ad coin out of MySpace.”

The social-networking behemoth MySpace is set to release a major redesign of its website and tech functions next week, including upgrades to its navigation, user-profile editing and search applications as well as an overhauled MySpaceTV vid player, company representatives said late Thursday evening.

“An official release is planned to go out on Monday, and the first new features will show up on the site on Wednesday, June 18.”

YouTube’s Head of Monetization Exits, Joins Cooliris

“Exodus of senior executive from Google continues.”

San Francisco - The executive supervising Google’s effort to generate ad revenue from its YouTube video-sharing service has now left the company to become the chief revenue officer of Menlo Park, Calif.-based startup Cooliris, the company said Tuesday.

“Adobe’s free online collaboration suite aims at making inroads against Google Apps and Microsoft Office Live Workspace.”

In a move to tap the growing segment of online office suites, Adobe joined the fight in the online office space Monday with the launch of an online document editing and sharing beta site, Acrobat.com, which will challenge the likes of Google Docs, Microsoft Office Live, and Zoho Office.

Acrobat version 9’s major revision is the inclusion of Flash support, while its Acrobat.com suite of word processing, file-sharing and Web conferencing software offers ways for PDF users to collaborate more closely when creating and working with documents online.

Brazil And India Appeal Microsoft’s OOXML Standard

Microsoft’s Open Office XML (OOXML) standard has been challenged by India, Brazil and South Africa, the International Electrotechnical Commission says.

Members of a Brazilian technical committee said the process that led to OOXML’s ratification was flawed, in part because not all participants were given enough time to make their views heard. The “fast-track” process in which OOXML was approved has been criticized. A blogger says rules were not followed, and Brazil has called the process approving OOXML flawed.