Internet developments in brief

Quick links to news stories and analysis of relevance to Internet investors:

The New York Times acquires About.com for $410 million.
As the advertising market heats up, content and traffic become more valuable.

Peter Thiel still not buying.
The founder of PayPal and now manager of Clarion Capital tells MarketWatch he's still not buying Internet stocks. He explicitly mentions Google, Yahoo, Amazon and eBay as stocks to avoid.

Privately held shopping search company IM2 gets $8 in funding.
The press release says:

A test version of the site, available at www.fatlens.com, currently only searches event ticketing sites such as Ticketmaster, eBay, Craigslist, Yahoo and StubHub. The fledgling e-commerce search provider said it plans to roll out more product categories later this year.

Forbes reports that The Sun ditches Google contextual ads in favor of Espotting.
Comment: publishers realize there's great need for more competition in the contextual advertising business. Where's Overture (Yahoo!)?

Ask Jeeves in talks with Mozilla about a Jeeves'-branded version of Firefox.
Ask Jeeves writes about its interest in Firefox on its blog, and MSN concludes that Ask Jeeves is mulling a Firefox-based browser.

Marchex updates guidance. The company says:

• Pro forma Consolidated 2005 Guidance: Although its Name  Development asset acquisition closed on February 14, 2005,  Marchex is providing a full year of guidance (as if the asset  acquisition closed on January 1, 2005) to give the effect for  full year pro forma results. Marchex is accordingly raising  its pro forma consolidated 2005 revenue guidance to more than  $86 million.
• In light of the Name Development asset acquisition closing,  Marchex is raising its full year stand-alone 2005 revenue  guidance to more than $84 million, which includes the partial  year contribution of the acquired assets.
• Marchex is also updating its stand-alone 2005 adjusted  operating income before amortization margin target to 28% or  more.
• Marchex is reiterating its long-term adjusted operating income  before amortization margin target of 30% or more.