AOL

Getting people to pay for news online at this point would be "like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons," a new consumer survey suggests.

That was one of several bleak headlines in the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual assessment of the state of the news industry, released Sunday.

The project's report contained an extensive look at habits of the estimated six in 10 Americans who say they get at least some news online during a typical day. On average, each person spends three minutes and four seconds per visit to a news site.

The search-engine wars are alive and well -- and Bing is the beneficiary again. Microsoft's so-called decision engine grabbed 11.5 percent of the U.S. search market in February, according to comScore.

Although that's only a slight increase over January, when Bing boasted 11.3 percent of the search market, it's an incremental improvement Microsoft is glad to see for its less-than-a-year-old engine.

Rumors abound that Apple is thinking about further severing its ties with its new competitor in the smartphone market, bouncing Google and giving Bing premium search placement on its mobile Safari browser. If the rumors are true and Bing becomes the default search engine, there could be a reversal of mobile-search fortunes.

Consider the implications behind the statistics. According to Chitika Research, Google is pulling healthy numbers from iPhone users. Specifically, Google search makes up just more than half of all Internet traffic on the iPhone.

A research organization that tries to warn computer users about programs that do sneaky things on their computers has spun off from Harvard University.

StopBadware says it will operate as a standalone nonprofit with funding from Google Inc., eBay Inc.'s PayPal and Mozilla, which makes the Firefox Web browser. It was initially set up as part of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

The struggling Internet company AOL was laying off up to 1,200 workers this week because it didn't get enough volunteers to accept buyouts.

AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose said Monday that only 1,100 had volunteered to leave. That means AOL would need to shed up to 1,200 positions to reach its previously announced reduction target of up to 2,300, or about a third of its work force.

After 59 acquisitions, Google has hit a roadblock with one of its latest purchase attempts. Consumer groups have asked the Federal Trade Commission to block the search giant's $750 million acquisition of AdMob, a mobile advertising company.

The Center for Digital Democracy and Consumer Watchdog said Google's acquisition would be anticompetitive. Acquiring AdMob gives Google the tools it needs to more effectively create and analyze mobile-ad formats.

An outage that impacted non-corporate BlackBerry e-mail services, apparently on multiple wireless carriers, was in the process of being rectified Thursday afternoon, according to Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. The outage didn't affect corporate e-mail, Internet access, or voice services, according to Sprint spokesperson Crystal Davis.

Nine years after its disastrous 164-billion-dollar merger with Time Warner, Internet pioneer AOL traded as an independent public company for the first time Thursday.

Shares of the once mighty Internet provider were down more than 2 percent in pre-market trading as investors and analysts questioned its ability to thrive in the modern online world as it tries to create content that will attract millions of users and help it sell advertising.