What are the big guys doing?

Almost all the big Internet companies (and probably software companies) have a Labs site where they dish out the latest they are working on.

Here are some of the most popular ones

1. Google Labs - http://labs.google.com

I guess many of us would know about this. This is where Google has their latest 20% innovations

2. Adobe Labs - http://labs.adobe.com

Adobe has probably defined Internet so quietly (or maybe Macromedia ;) ) that we use all of their products and yet be oblivious that its made by Adobe. At Adobe Labs, you will probably find the next generation Internet platforms that Internet companies work on.

3. Yahoo Next - http://labs.yahoo.com

Yahoo calls their playground - Yahoo Next. They have pretty interesting products lined up like My Web 2.0 Beta and is worth a check.

4. AOL Labs - http://labs.aol.com

AOL has a labs page too, their labs concentrates mostly on AIM and its plugins

5. Microsoft Research - http://research.microsoft.com
Doesn't exactly have too much of Web experiments, but they do have some interesting projects such as Nocturnal

Their http://labs.msn.com throws up something which probably associates them best -Service Unavailable

Know any other company playgrounds ? Leave us a comment!

Ten Worst Internet Acquisitions Ever

As the market for acquiring fledgling Internet companies heats up, it's worth taking a look at all those acquisitions that didn't quite work out. For every Internet acquisition that's successful there seems to be dozens that die on the vine.

So what makes for a really bad Internet acquisition? First, it has to be expensive. No one's going to rake a company over the coals over a few blown $50 million acquisitions. That might sound like a lot of money to you and me, but that's a rounding error to Google.

Second, for an acquisition to be lousy it has to contribute little or no long term growth to the acquiring company. An acquisition that doesn't fit with a company's long term strategy and that is quickly forgotten - that's a bad buy.

So, here is my highly subjective list of the 10 worst Internet acquisitions of all time:

Read more Via SeekingAlpha

Internet Under Threat!

Sir Tim Berners-Lee the founder of the world wide web is of the opinion that the Internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats. Blogging to be one of the biggest perils of the Internet because of the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information.

Read more on the Guardian

Quimble - Internet Polls

Quimble lets you add polls to your website/blog pretty quickly. You just have to add one line of Javascript and you are on! You can create a poll like the one you see below .

Anonymous Surfing through Qoosa

Qoosa is a free online proxy server that lets you browse anonymously. Has features such as removing images, cookies, referring information.