Some interesting Web Tech news out today...

- Web giants ask for feds' help on censorship; mostly relating to US Big Internet Companies (Goog, MS and Y!) trying to do business in China, although this CNET report suggests that about 25 countries around the world are currently engaged in Internet filtering.

- Yahoo Planning to Add 100 Web Sites for Entertainment; NY Times reports on Yahoo's Brand Universe strategy, which aims to "create environments where fans of brands can hang out when they are online." The first example is the Nintendo Wii site, which R/WW covered in November. I think it's a good way to drive more traffic and eyeballs, and it utilizes the Yahoo 'social media infrastructure' (to coin an awkward phrase). In essence Yahoo is shifting focus more to being a Web platform for externally branded content - rather than creating most of the content itself.

- Google 4Q Earnings Nearly Triple; The Googernaut rolls on, with the Mountain View company earning $1.03 billion during the final 3 months of 2006. Not wanting to appear over-confident, Google CEO Eric Schmidt cautiously noted in his public announcement of the earnings: "To be growing this fast at this stage is phenomenal".

- comScore Networks Releases Top Web Properties Worldwide for December; this is interesting, as Google sites are now ranked number 2, just behind Microsoft sites and ahead of Yahoo. Also check out the top-gaining categories worldwide in 2006: Multimedia (up 37 percent, mostly due to YouTube), Community (up 33 percent, including MySpace and Blogger.com), E-mail (up 16 percent, thanks largely to Google Gmail - up 71 percent to 60 million visitors year-over-year), News/Information (up 15 percent) and Games (up 14 percent).