WSJ writes about the eBay-Yahoo and Google-Dell deals:

The deals come amid growing ambitions of the Internet companies that increasingly have them encroaching on one another's turf. Rivalries are building as Internet penetration in the U.S. has reached a mature, slower-growth phase. That augurs more battles over attracting and retaining current Internet users, who are increasing the time they spend online. At the same time, relationships among many Internet companies exist already, complicating rivalries and prospective alliances.

More scuffles for new alliances appear to already be underway. Google and Microsoft, for example, are competing to provide search technology and related advertising to News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media division, which includes the popular MySpace social networking site, according to people familiar with the matter. A Fox Interactive spokeswoman declined to comment. EBay itself could be a further object of heated courting by rivals. The Yahoo-eBay ad agreement is exclusive to the U.S., leaving open the possibility of eBay doing an ad deal with Google or Microsoft in Europe and Asia.

[via Atanu] O'Reilly Radar has an article by Marc. A pick:

Build what you know -- this is the most basic advice of idea generation: scratch an itch you have yourself. To make a great company, stop and ensure that your need is broadly felt, and that your solution is broadly applicable -- not everyone spends their life in front of a computer, remember.

Your ideas will get better the more you know about business -- engineers hate to hear this, but you can generalize up quite far from here: the more you know about everything, the better all of your ideas will get! If you want to start a business and your strength is in development, learning about pricing, sales, marketing, finance, and yes, even HR, all of it will make your product ideas stronger and better.

Tomi Ahonen blogs a comment by Google CEO Eric Schmidt: "Mobile phones are cheaper than PCs, there are three times more of them, growing at twice the speed, and they increasingly have internet access. What is more, the World Bank estimates that more than two-thirds of the world's population lives within range of a mobile phone network. Mobile is going to be the next big internet phenomenon. It holds the key to greater access to everyone - with all the benefits that entails."