Internet Companies

Yesterday was the third anniversary of the Nasdaq composite index's all-time high of 5,048.62, the peak of the infamous tech bubble. Since tech stocks began their free fall, scores of once-high-flying dot-coms have vanished. The Nasdaq composite closed yesterday at 1,278.37, down 74.6 percent from three years ago. But with eBay Inc. trading in the high $70s, and shares of Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. doubling over the last year, is the Internet sector recovering? A more important question: Are Internet stocks sensible investments now?

Two formerly high-flying Internet companies in the area are downsizing dramatically, and one of them is moving out of the region completely. 4Anything Network, an online search company in Wayne, said it would hand out pink slips today to 40 of its 54 employees - 74 percent of its workforce. Meanwhile, U.S. Interactive Inc., an Internet-services consulting firm, confirmed yesterday that it would be closing its King of Prussia headquarters by March 23 and laying off the remaining 43 workers there.

For the past decade, Safeguard Scientifics of Wayne has been a kind of cult stock, allowing its 35,000 shareholders - mostly individuals, not big institutions - to get a rare first crack at investing in new high-tech companies. Occasionally a Safeguard-backed firm might be acquired at an attractive price, or sell stock in an initial public offering (IPO). If the price was right, Safeguard investors made money. And then came the Internet. Suddenly, IPOs are a license to multiply your money - and Safeguard is planning to do more of them, in hopes a flood of Wall Street dollars will finance its vision of a lucrative network of Internet-commerce companies.

snacks Twinkies buys Devil Dogs Interstate Bakeries Corp., the nation's largest baking company, is buying Drake's, adding the maker of Ring Dings, Devil Dogs and Yankee Doodles snack cakes to a lineup that includes Hostess Twinkies and Wonder Bread. Terms of the all-cash transaction with Culinar Inc., the Canadian company that owns Drake's, weren't disclosed. Drake's, with a bakery in Wayne, N.J., has annual sales of $115 million, mostly in the northeastern United States.

SAN FRANCISCO - It's starting to feel like a 1999 flashback. Internet companies - some of them profitable, some not - sense a golden opportunity and are lining up to go public this year. But we're nowhere close to the giddy days of the late '90s dot-com boom, when investors bought newly issued stocks as impulsively as lottery tickets. Technology stocks today are the cheapest in more than nine years, judging by one benchmark for appraising companies. In addition, venture capitalists who bankroll high-tech start-ups aren't pouring money into the Internet like they once did. Moreover, rapidly growing Internet companies LinkedIn Corp.

The federal government left a gift under the tree last week for companies that provide Internet service, saying that they probably wouldn't have to pay large new fees to local telephone companies. In a notice issued Christmas Eve, the Federal Communications Commission "tentatively" concluded that Internet service providers should not have to pay so-called access fees to local phone companies. Internet service providers have said that imposing those per-minute fees on them would surely kill off cheap, flat-rate Internet service, such as the now-standard $19.95-a-month plans.

A Russian-born billionaire who dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School has just made the Nobel Prize for Physics look like chump change. Yuri Milner, 50, has made big splashes before, investing hundreds of millions in the likes of Facebook and Groupon, gracing the cover of Forbes last year, and, this spring, spending $100 million for a single-family Silicon Valley home. Now, Milner, who was educated as a physicist before seeking his Wharton M.B.A. in the early '90s, has awarded $3 million each to nine physicists, including four at Princeton's Center for Advanced Study.

As the Chinese government braced two years ago for the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, it sent instructions to state-controlled newspapers on how to handle coverage. One of the journalists who got the memo was Shi Tao, a reporter for the daily Contemporary Business Review in Hunan province. The memo warned that Tiananmen anniversary observances could destabilize Chinese society. Shi, using his Yahoo! account, e-mailed it to a pro-democracy Web site. A short time later, Shi, 38, was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for revealing state secrets.

Sorry, that number is no longer in service. That's the message that hundreds, even thousands of Internet surfers may soon get from their Internet-access providers, because of a little-noticed change in Pennsylvania telephone regulations. An Aug. 6 decision by the Public Utility Commission requires Bell Atlantic Corp. to raise the rates on a service that scores of companies had depended on to permit them to sell inexpensive Internet access. Some small Internet-access companies say the ruling threatens to kill their businesses or force them to trim operations, especially in rural areas.

One click away. " That, according to Philadelphia's chief information officer, is how far city government is from using the Internet to streamline the delivery of government services. It couldn't happen a moment sooner. As Daily News staff writer Michael Hinkelman reports today on Page 29, Philadelphia's city government is getting ready to unveil its new Web site, its business card to the virtual world of the Internet, where people are increasingly turning to make purchases, get information and - in many cities - pay taxes and report problems.

ESCALATING one of tech's biggest rivalries, Microsoft Corp. is accusing Google Inc. of compromising the privacy of Gmail users - leveling the charge in an unusual, in-your-face ad campaign that it hopes will resonate with consumers even if some analysts call it alarmist and irresponsible. The public attacks - in print, television and billboard messages that warn consumers about the supposed dangers of being "Scroogled," or mistreated by Google - marks a strategic shift in a clash of Internet titans, under the guidance of a bare-knuckle political-campaign strategist.

A Russian-born billionaire who dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School has just made the Nobel Prize for Physics look like chump change. Yuri Milner, 50, has made big splashes before, investing hundreds of millions in the likes of Facebook and Groupon, gracing the cover of Forbes last year, and, this spring, spending $100 million for a single-family Silicon Valley home. Now, Milner, who was educated as a physicist before seeking his Wharton M.B.A. in the early '90s, has awarded $3 million each to nine physicists, including four at Princeton's Center for Advanced Study.

By Ted Silary silaryt@phillynews.com In a crowded corner of St. Joseph's Prep's basketball locker room, long after much of the excitement had ebbed, coach William "Speedy" Morris finally got the chance to address his players. First things first: There'd be practice today. No one booed or even groaned. Then he noted, "Too much of this is on me. " Well, sir, the spotlight tends to resemble the sun when a guy garners his nine hundredth career coaching victory.

WASHINGTON - President Obama is trying to rebuild the American economy, one job at a time - literally. The president asked an online town hall questioner Monday to send him her husband's resume, insisting he wanted to look into why the man remained out of work despite his background as a semiconductor engineer. "I meant what I said, if you send me your husband's resume, I'd be interested in finding out exactly what's happening right there," Obama told the questioner, Jennifer Wedel of Fort Worth, Texas.

SAN FRANCISCO - It's starting to feel like a 1999 flashback. Internet companies - some of them profitable, some not - sense a golden opportunity and are lining up to go public this year. But we're nowhere close to the giddy days of the late '90s dot-com boom, when investors bought newly issued stocks as impulsively as lottery tickets. Technology stocks today are the cheapest in more than nine years, judging by one benchmark for appraising companies. In addition, venture capitalists who bankroll high-tech start-ups aren't pouring money into the Internet like they once did. Moreover, rapidly growing Internet companies LinkedIn Corp.

The U-Haul truck that pulled away from a nondescript Center City office building Wednesday night was packed with at least 81 boxes of evidence collected from one of the country's most successful providers of online adult videos. But on Thursday, the question remained: Evidence of what? Paul Fishbein, founder of AVN Media Network, the leading trade publication for the adult industry, assumed that authorities had launched an obscenity investigation. He described Richard Cohen, owner of the raided companies, as "a really good customer and a friend.

On a day when more than 11 million Americans were out of work, I found a job. Considering the economy, it was a crowning achievement. But, sadly, it meant leaving my longtime profession, newspaper journalism. Still, I was ready - and so was it. What had once been a worthy and satisfying business was in eclipse. My departure meant a slight but welcome improvement to a woeful bottom line. I did not work for the paper you are now reading, but it and all papers are facing similar fiscal trials.

Comcast Corp. admitted yesterday that it paid people to attend a government hearing. Company critics say the freelance attendees were there to crowd them out; Comcast says they were merely saving seats for employees. The five-hour hearing Monday at Harvard University was organized by the Federal Communications Commission to address the issue of net neutrality, a hot-button topic for those who think there should be minimal restrictions on Internet traffic. The topic has drawn wide interest from college students, media-reform groups, and Internet companies.

As the Chinese government braced two years ago for the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, it sent instructions to state-controlled newspapers on how to handle coverage. One of the journalists who got the memo was Shi Tao, a reporter for the daily Contemporary Business Review in Hunan province. The memo warned that Tiananmen anniversary observances could destabilize Chinese society. Shi, using his Yahoo! account, e-mailed it to a pro-democracy Web site. A short time later, Shi, 38, was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for revealing state secrets.

Yesterday was the third anniversary of the Nasdaq composite index's all-time high of 5,048.62, the peak of the infamous tech bubble. Since tech stocks began their free fall, scores of once-high-flying dot-coms have vanished. The Nasdaq composite closed yesterday at 1,278.37, down 74.6 percent from three years ago. But with eBay Inc. trading in the high $70s, and shares of Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. doubling over the last year, is the Internet sector recovering? A more important question: Are Internet stocks sensible investments now?