CBS has agreed to purchase CNET Networks for $1.8 Billion, making it one of the 10 most popular internet companies in the world with over 54 million unique visitors per month.

CNET; a leading provider of entertainment, news and information sites; currently controls a number of popular destinations including CNET.com, ZDNet.com, BNET.com, GameSpot.com, GameFAQs.com, TV.com, mp3.com, UrbanBaby.com, CHOW.com, Search.com, MySimon.com and TechRepublic.com.

The deal was unanimously approved by CNET’s board and is expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter. [via News.com, DirectNavigation, and Yahoo]

Ask.com has acquired several major reference websites including Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com in its purchase of the Lexico Publishing Group LLC. This news comes 10 months after Answers.com agreed to buy the same company for $100 million in a deal that fell through.

The terms of the acquisition have yet to be disclosed. [via TheDomains.com]

Edwin Hayward of MemorableDomains.co.uk just wrapped up three days of exhibiting at the InternetWorld in the UK and has written a summary of his experiences exhibiting at the show as a domain reseller of top .co.uk generic domain names. The company, as mentioned in a previous article, was exhibiting at the show and featured some of their top domain names for sale including Britain.co.uk, Maps.co.uk and SearchEngine.co.uk.

Six generic IPTV Set-Top Box domains are now listed at Sedo. These IPTV Set-Top Box domains are listed in Sedo featured domains section, with private reserve prices.

The listed domains are: IPTVBox.com, IPTVBoxes.com, IPTVSetTopBox.com, IPTVSetTopBoxes.com, IPTVSetTop.com and SetTop-Boxes.com

[via Press Release]

dotMobi, the registry for .MOBI domains, has purchased the intellectual rights to Mowser, a software that automatically converts regular web pages into sites that are compatible with the mobile web.

The deal was made less than a month after Russell Beattie, the founder of Mowser, said he didn’t believe in the mobile web anymore and was going to stop working on the program.

[via TechCrunch]

Dan from DNZoom tipped us that they are celebrating their 1 year birthday by giving away a ticket to the TRAFFIC show in Orlando.  Check out the DnZoom site for more details on how to win.

WidgetBucks, a product centric ad network, has teamed up with Marchex and BlueLithium to expand their ad widget integration.

Marchex is planning to use WidgetBucks to power their local, debt/finance, and pay-per-call ads across their local content network and hundreds of other sites.

[via TechCrunch]

As reported earlier, Thought Convergence, parent company of TrafficZ, announced today the purchase of Name Intelligence, operator of the DomainTools.com website and Domain Roundtable event. The sale has been confirmed by Jay Westerdal with a post on his DomainTools Blog.

The rumored sales price sales price of 16-18 million USD has not been confirmed. DomainTools will continue to be lead by Ray Bero and Jay Westerdal. Westerdal will also be joining the board of Thought Convergence.

Yes, you heard it right . .. No, it’s not April Fools again.  A listing on Godaddy’s TDNAM.com (Domain Name Aftermarket)  brought me a chuckle tonight, so I thought I’d pass it along. 

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According to several sources the Australian Registrar Melbourne IT has purchased the Verisign Digital Brand Management Services (DBMS) unit for $50 Million USD. Verisign DBMS is a a domain registration and brand monitoring service mostly used by large corporations, such as Microsoft.

[via TechCrunch]