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Pop quiz: What was 10 years ago today (Tuesday)?

The answer?  Netscape’s much anticipated IPO.  It was a first for the internet: a company that made no money all of a sudden selling shares in itself.  The IPO raised $140 million for Netscape which by todays tech IPO terms is a paltry amount.  But 10 years ago that was huge.  If you are interested there is a Netscape IPO prospectus available on Ebay right now.

Whose is bigger?  Apparently Yahoo! has the biggest index, at least according to Yahoo! as they reported a new index size of over 20 billion items, including web pages, documents, images, audio and video files.

Some long awaited Google News:  The company is finally offering RSS and ATOM feeds for its popular news service.  I must say, its about time.  I like Google news, but its kinda frustrating to have to go to the site to view the news, especially with the rapid growth and adoption of feeds.  You can either get the top headlines, or perform a search and get a feed for the results.

In other Google news, just days after the Baidu IPO, Google has announced a Chinese based vendor for AdWords.  This move puts Google out front of the race to grab Chinese searchers.

Microsoft has settled a suit with a spammer for $7 million.  Identified as the “Spam King” Scott Richter is reported to have sent, or helped send, billions of spam emails.

In other Microsoft news, a new project was unveiled to the public.  Called HoneyMonkey, the system is designed to sniff out and report vulnerabilities on the web.  Basically it is a bunch of virtual Windows based computers running various levels of patches and security fixes that browses the web looking for sites that will exploit vulnerabilities.  As a site is found, it is logged, and then let into the system to see what it tries to exploit.  If it finds a weakness, that infected system is immediately taken down, and the malware is then allowed to move onto the next system.  This procedure continues until either the exploit is stopped, or Microsoft finds a new vulnerability to be patched.  Microsoft also plans to share its information with law enforcement in an effort to take down these sites legally.

And finally, on the spyware track – a new report shows that one of the most prevalent pieces of spyware is actually part of a much larger system designed to steal ID’s.  The system, commonly known as CoolWebSearch, actually has an integrated keylogger that regularly reports back to a server in Texas which logs everything from millions of infected computers.  While this program commonly annoys people by hijacking their browser, this new exploit was uncovered almost by accident.

So, if you haven’t installed a spyware removal tool yet, chances are you have been infected and there is even a good chance that your personal information, including credit card information, bank accounts and internet passwords are not stored somewhere else just waiting for someone else to assume your identify.