Consumer content

Marc Andreessen is adding venture capitalist to the growing list of titles he wears in the tech world, which includes serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and browser technology pioneer, according to a report in peHUB.

Andreessen is launching the venture fund with Ben Horowitz, a former Netscape veteran and co-founder of Opsware, two companies that Andreessen co-founded, the report states.

The venture fund is the latest evolution to the angel investment relationship Andreessen and Horowitz share. Last year, for example, the pair were angel investors in mobile video service Qik and virtual world company Metaplace.

And Thursday night, Andreessen made an … Read more

Want to find a reputable dentist? How about a cozy bar for that perfect second date? A few years ago, you would have consulted friends. Today, chances are good that Yelp is the place you go.

But what if you found out that some of the reviews were written by hired hands--or that reviews were either removed or placed higher or lower on the page based on whether the merchant was willing to pay Yelp for special services?

Those are the allegations being made in an expose in the East Bay Express this week. The newspaper reported that six business owners said Yelp sales reps promised to remove or move negative reviews in exchange for advertising and that in six other instances positive reviews disappeared or negative ones appeared after owners declined ad deals.

The allegations could have consequences for Yelp, which was founded in July 2004 as a site where people can post reviews and ratings of businesses. It operates in about three dozen U.S. cities, as well as in Canada and the U.K.

In his rebuttal to the article posted on his blog, Yelp Chief Executive Jeremy Stoppelman denies all the allegations and questions the story's sources, including one named source he claims had reviews removed because they were deemed to be fake.

"There is irrefutable evidence that we do not do that," Stoppelman told CNET News on Thursday when asked whether the placement of some reviews is determined by advertising deals. "It's absolutely ridiculous that somebody would say we are going to write a review and call a business (to sell advertising). That's not how you build a sustainable business...Trust and integrity are key to staying in business."

The problem, according to Stoppelman, lies in the company's secret sauce for filtering out reviews.

At the mercy Basically, merchants are at the mercy of a computer algorithm just like Web sites are at the mercy of what is known as the "Google Dance"--the monthly update of the Google search engine's index. One tweak of the Google index can potentially make or break a business.

… Read more

Updated February 20 at 10 a.m. PST with alleged source of leak.

Despite extreme measures to prevent U2's new album from appearing prematurely on the Internet, copies of the band's "No Line on the Horizon" have begun circulating on file-swapping networks--a full week before its official release.

CD-quality copies of the band's 12th album, which is slated for release in Ireland on February 27 and worldwide on March 3, started appearing Wednesday on BitTorrent and now reportedly number in the hundreds of thousands. Copies were also found circulating on LimeWire.

The tracks began spreading … Read more

There's nothing connecting Hulu's decisions to pull out of TV.com and Boxee on the same day, according to sources close to the company.

Hulu's managers were motivated by very different reasons in each case, said the sources (TV.com is owned by CBS, parent company of CNET News). Nonetheless, the decision to dump Boxee is bad for the start-up, for Web video fans, and for Hulu.

In a blog post published Wednesday, Hulu executives said they have asked Boxee to remove their content--starting on Friday-- because their content partners don't want their material to appear … Read more

Chris Shipley, host and producer of the Demo conferences, is stepping down in 2010 to make way for Matt Marshall, CEO and editor in chief of the tech blog VentureBeat.

At the next Demo event, Demo09, which will be held March 1 in Palm Desert, Calif., Marshall will share the stage with Shipley. He refers to this show and the one after it as his "internship." Afterward, his company will be at the helm of this old conference.

Demo has been a fixture of the start-up community for years, but got an uptick in awareness when Michael Arrington, … Read more

Fresh from removing content from TV.com, Hulu has now requested that Boxee, the maker of media-center software, stop making Hulu's videos available, according to a statement posted to Boxee's blog.

"Two weeks ago Hulu called and told us their content partners were asking them to remove Hulu from Boxee," Boxee said in the post. "We tried (many times) to plead the case for keeping Hulu on Boxee, but on Friday of this week, in good faith, we will be removing it. You can see their blog post about the issues they are facing." … Read more

Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL each carved out a little more U.S. search market share in January, but Google still had the biggest piece of the pie, according to a report Wednesday by ComScore.

Yahoo Web sites accounted for 21 percent of the market (up half a percent) compared to the month before, while Microsoft grabbed an 8.5 percent slice (up 0.2 percent), and AOL nabbed 3.9 percent of the market (a 0.1 percent increase).

Google, while still holding the largest slice of the market by far, accounted for 63 percent of the search industry in … Read more

A couple in Pittsburgh whose lawsuit claimed that Street View on Google Maps is a reckless invasion of their privacy lost their case.

Aaron and Christine Boring sued the Internet search giant last April, alleging that Google "significantly disregarded (their) privacy interests" when Street View cameras captured images of their house beyond signs marked "private road." The couple claimed in their five-count lawsuit that finding their home clearly visible on Google's Street View caused them "mental suffering" and diluted their home value. They sought more than $25,000 in damages and asked that … Read more

Update at 11:38 a.m. PST, with comment from Hulu.

Hulu.com has pulled its content off CBS-owned TV.com, which relaunched last month, Hulu confirmed Wednesday.

(Disclosure: CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.)

Attempts to access episodes of Heroes and other content from NBC and News Corp. partners in the Hulu joint venture, displayed a "video unavailable" message.

In a statement, Hulu said:

Hulu has contractual rights with regards to our relationship with TV.com and we are exercising those rights. Out of respect for their confidentiality, we will not disclose … Read more