Best Internet Stocks To Watch For 2014

Next month,�Apple� (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) is expected to unveil upgraded Macs, most likely in the form of MacBooks. The company will likely bump internal specs with no major external changes. Among these improvements may be the inclusion of�Broadcom's (NASDAQ: BRCM  ) newest Wi-Fi combo chips. Thanks to these chips, the new models may support the newest Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ac, that offers theoretical maximum speeds of 1,000 megabits per second, or Mbps.

That speed capability will go to waste, as the average American's Internet speed is approximately 6 Mbps, according to�Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) estimates. The search giant's Fiber service is a gigabit service that could reach those theoretical maximums. Google is catalyzing the industry with its disruptive threat, and eventually users may be able to tap into gigabit Wi-Fi.

In the video below, Fool contributor Evan Niu, CFA, explains why the move may not do users any good for now.

There's no doubt that Apple is at the center of technology's largest revolution ever, and that longtime shareholders have been handsomely rewarded with over 1,000% gains. However, there is a debate raging as to whether Apple remains a buy. The Motley Fool's senior technology analyst and managing bureau chief, Eric Bleeker, is prepared to fill you in on reasons to buy and reasons to sell Apple, and what opportunities are left for the company (and your portfolio) going forward. To get instant access to his latest thinking on Apple, simply click here now.

10 Best India Stocks To Buy Right Now: Yahoo! Inc.(YHOO)

Yahoo! Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a digital media company that delivers personalized digital content and experiences through various devices worldwide. It offers online properties and services to users; and a range of marketing services to businesses. The company?s communications and communities offerings include Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, Flickr, and Connected TV, which provide a range of communication and social services to users and small businesses enabling users to organize into groups and share knowledge, common interests, and photos. Its search products comprise Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Local, available free to users to navigate the Internet and discover content. The company?s marketplaces offerings and services include Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Travel, Yahoo! Real Estate, Yahoo! Autos, and Yahoo! Small Business, which allow users to research specific topics, products, services, or areas of interest by review ing and exchanging information, obtaining contact details, or considering offers from providers of goods, services, or parties with similar interests. Its media offerings comprise Yahoo! Homepage, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Toolbar, Yahoo! Entertainment & Lifestyles, Yahoo! Contributor Network, and Yahoo! Pulse, which are designed to engage users with online content and services on the Web. The company also offers marketing services, such as display and search advertising, listing-based services, and commerce-based transactions to advertisers. In addition, it provides software and platform offerings for third-party developers, advertisers, and publishers, such as Yahoo! Developer Network, Yahoo! Open Strategy, Yahoo! Application Platform, Yahoo! Updates, Yahoo! Query Language, and Yahoo! Search BOSS. The company has strategic alliances with Nokia and ABC News, Inc. Yahoo! Inc. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Californi a.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Alex Dumortier, CFA]

  Time to exit Yahoo?
  Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO  ) announced yesterday that it had agreed to repurchase 40 million of its own shares from activist hedge fund manager Third Point, led by Dan Loeb. Yahoo! will pay $29.11 per share (last Friday's closing price), and the transaction reduces Third Point's position by approximately two-thirds to roughly 20 million shares (less than 2% of the common shares outstanding). The three Yahoo! directors nominated by Third Point, including Loeb himself, will step down from the board at the end of the month.

• [By Jayson Derrick]

  Analysts at Macquarie upgraded Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) to Outperform from Neutral. Shares gained 2.29 percent, closing at $34.21.

  Equities-Specific News of Note

• [By Lauren Pollock]

  Yahoo Inc.(YHOO) Chief Executive Marissa Mayer turned in another quarter without meaningful growth, despite bringing on a host of new companies through acquisitions. The Internet company reported third-quarter revenue that matched Wall Street’s expectations, with adjusted profit a penny higher than expected. Shares edged up 1.7% to $33.95 premarket.

• [By Amanda Alix]

  How dangerous?
  Cyber attacks on websites, particularly the DDoS-type of disruption, first began in 2001. Back then, sites like eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY  ) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO  ) were targeted, possibly in an attempt to disrupt e-commerce. Since then, groups like Izz ad-Din-as-Qassam or groups tied to the Iranian government have staged assaults on the websites of big banks like�Bank of America (NYSE: BAC  ) , Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC  ) , and Citgroup (NYSE: C  ) , as well as large regionals such as BB&T (NYSE: BBT  ) and PNC Financial.

Best Internet Stocks To Watch For 2014: eBay Inc.(EBAY)

eBay Inc. provides online platforms, services, and tools to help individuals and merchants in online and mobile commerce and payments in the United States and internationally. Its Marketplaces segment operates ecommerce platform eBay.com; vertical shopping sites, such as StubHub, Fashion, Motors, and Half.com; and classifieds Websites, including Den Bl�Avis, BilBasen, Gumtree, Kijiji, LoQUo, Marktplaats.nl, mobile.de, Alamaula, Rent.com, eBay Anuncios, eBay Kleinanzeigen, and eBay Annunci, as well as provides advertising services. The company?s Payments segment offers payment and settlement services for consumers and merchants on and off eBay Websites and other merchant Websites. This segment operates PayPal, which enables individuals and businesses to send and receive payments online and through mobile devices; Bill Me Later that enables the United States merchants to offer, the United States consumers to obtain, credit at the point of sale for ecommerce and mobile tra nsactions; Zong, which allows users with mobile phones to purchase digital goods and have the transactions charged to their phone bill; and BillSAFE that enables customers pay for purchases upon receipt of an invoice. Its GSI segment offers an ecommerce services suite for enterprise clients that operate in general merchandise categories, including apparel, sporting goods, toys and baby, health and beauty, and home; and marketing services comprising full-service digital agency, enterprise email marketing, mobile advertising, affiliate marketing, advertisement retargeting, and in-depth analytics services. The company also offers X.commerce platform that provides software developers access to the company?s applications programming interfaces to develop functionality for various merchants; and Magento Connect, which allows developers to market and sell add-on functionality and solutions to merchants that use a Magento storefront. eBay Inc. was founded in 1995 and is headquarter ed in San Jose, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Interesting… so we got negative earnings from [Goldman Sachs (GS), eBay (EBAY), International Business Machines (IBM). And SPX doing very well. You can argue that EBAY does not have broad relevance to market, and that GS is really a quarter to quarter thing, where earnings this quarter tell us little about next quarter (trading), but IBM is a big deal as it is a good measure of spending on IT. So SPX performance very impressive, even though it is driven to some extent by defensives/ rates plays (utilities, telcos etc). This is a good sign. The market wants to go up into year end.

• [By MONEYMORNING.COM]

  "An offering of this size would give Alibaba a $168 billion market cap - making it smaller than Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG, GOOGL), but larger than Facebook, Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), and eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY)," Money Morning's Executive Editor Bill Patalon said.
  
  The Piper Jaffray estimate is the latest in a string of bullish projections for the Alibaba IPO. Last week, the investment research firm Morningstar estimated that Alibaba could raise an incredible $26 billion in its IPO. Before that, financial research company Sanford C. Bernstein estimated Alibaba's value at $230 billion.

• [By Tamara Rutter]

  The holiday shopping season is the most important time of year for retailers. In fact, holiday sales can account for as much as 40% of annual revenue for some retailers, according to the National Retail Federation. But a shortened holiday season this year is pushing companies such as Amazon.com� (NASDAQ: AMZN  ) and eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY  ) to rethink their strategies. With just 50 days until Christmas, let's take a look at which online retailer will be a bigger hit with shoppers this year.

• [By Steve Heller]

  It seems that once you've grown large enough to disrupt business as usual for MasterCard (NYSE: MA  ) and Visa (NYSE: V  ) , you run the risk of getting muscled. MasterCard recently announced plans to raise prices on intermediated payment processors (read: digital wallets) that chose to withhold valuable transaction details from MasterCard. In other words, this measure takes direct aim at eBay's (NASDAQ: EBAY  ) PayPal and other digital wallets such as Google Wallet that do not share transaction details with the payment processor.

Best Internet Stocks To Watch For 2014: Google Inc.(GOOG)

Google Inc. maintains an index of Web sites and other online content for users, advertisers, and Google network members and other content providers. It offers AdWords, an auction-based advertising program; AdSense program, which enables Web sites that are part of the Google Network to deliver ads from its AdWords advertisers; Google Display, a display advertising network that comprises the videos, text, images, and other interactive ads; DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a real-time auction marketplace for the trading of display ad space; and YouTube that provides video, interactive, and other ad formats for advertisers. The company also provides Google Mobile that optimizes Google?s applications for mobile devices in browser and downloadable form; and enables advertisers to run search ad campaigns on mobile devices, as well as Google Local that provides local information on the Web; and Google Boost for small businesses to participate in the ads auction. In addition, it offers And roid, an open source mobile software platform; Google Chrome OS, an open source operating system; Google Chrome, a Web browser; Google TV, a platform for the consumers to use the television and the Internet on a single screen; and Google Books platform to discover, search, and consume content from printed books online. Further, the company provides Google Apps, a cloud computing suite of message and collaboration tools, which includes Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Sites; Google Search Appliance that offers real-time search of business and intranet applications, and public Web sites; Google Site Search, a custom search engine; Google Commerce Search for online retail enterprises; Google Checkout to make online shopping and payments streamlined and secure; Google Maps Application Programming Interface; and Google Earth Enterprise, a firewall software solution for imagery and data visualization. Google Inc. was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Bryan Murphy]

  Think patent wars are only being fought - and won - by consumer technologies like Vringo, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNG) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)? Think again. While the Vringo patent war with Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and the Apple infringement case against Samsung may have been the world's highest-profile patent litigation conflicts (and most covered by the media), patent infringement claims and subsequent court cases have become just as common within the biotech world. Just ask Idenix Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:IDIX) and Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:GILD)... two biotech names that are currently duking it out over patents that look nearly identical. Indeed, a coin toss may be just as fair of a way to decide who's right and who's wrong between Idenix and Gilead.

• [By Kevin Chen]

  Analyzing�IBM� (NYSE: IBM  ) , Baidu� (NASDAQ: BIDU  ) , Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) ,�Google� (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) , and Nokia (NYSE: NOK  ) , Kevin calculates the return on research capital, or RORC. You can calculate this number yourself by taking this year's gross profit and dividing it by last year's R&D expenditures.

• [By WWW.DAILYFINANCE.COM]

  www.amazon.com Netflix (NFLX) is running away with the video streaming market. A report by Internet traffic researcher Sandvine shows that Netflix is responsible for 34.2 percent of the information superhighway's peak downstream traffic. We're not talking about more than a third of the video streaming market. We're talking about more than a third of all of the Web's downstream traffic. The only company that's even close is Amazon.com (AMZN). Amazon's Prime Instant -- the video catalog of movies and TV shows that the leading online retailer makes available to its Amazon Prime customers at no additional cost -- is slurping up 1.9 percent of the peak downstream usage. Amazon added potentially game-changing content this week. And let's not forget about the potential of its new Fire TV. Content is King On Wednesday it added content from Time Warner's (TWX) HBO -- entire runs of classic shows including "The Sopranos," "The Wire" and "Six Feet Under," alongside older episodes of current shows, including "Girls" and "Boardwalk Empire." This is a big score for Amazon, especially since HBO is unlikely to ever let Netflix get its hands on this content. HBO sees Netflix as the enemy. A lot of cable titans do. Striking content licensing deals with Netflix makes it stronger, increasing the chances of subscribers canceling their cable or satellite television plans. This could explain why Viacom (VIA) went with Amazon as a streaming outlet for some of its Nickelodeon and Comedy Central content after its deal with Netflix expired. Making Amazon's content stronger makes it less likely that a single video platform will replace pay TV subscriptions. Netflix has scored critical praise for "House of Cards" and "Orange Is the New Black," and Amazon is also beefing up its homegrown content. Last year's debut of "Alpha Dogs" and "Betas" were its first forays, but they failed to generate the buzz that Netflix has built for its exclusive programming. Now Amazon is setting its sigh

Best Internet Stocks To Watch For 2014: Amazon.com Inc.(AMZN)

Amazon.com, Inc. operates as an online retailer in North America and internationally. It operates retail Web sites, including amazon.com and amazon.ca. The company serves consumers through its retail Web sites and focuses on selection, price, and convenience. It also offers programs that enable sellers to sell their products on its Web sites, and their own branded Web sites. In addition, the company serves developer customers through Amazon Web Services, which provides access to technology infrastructure that developers can use to enable virtually various type of business. Further, it manufactures and sells the Kindle e-reader. Additionally, the company provides fulfillment; miscellaneous marketing and promotional agreements, such as online advertising; and co-branded credit cards. Amazon.com, Inc. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Joe Tenebruso]

  The Amazon threat
  Google makes the great majority of its revenue from connecting businesses with consumers that are searching for products and services to buy. So what happens when these consumers begin to search for those products on Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN  ) instead? Thanks to its wide selection of goods, low prices, and excellent customer service, Amazon has become the first and last place that many consumers shop online. Google has taken steps to combat this trend with its product listing ads. These ads appear as a set of product photos with prices and links near the top of Google's search result pages, and also push Amazon's regular search results further down the page -- making them less likely to be clicked. In addition, if these ads increase the convenience of searching for items on Google, it could reverse the tide of people going directly to Amazon.com.

• [By Rich Smith]

  "Finders keepers, loser weepers" is a rule that should be familiar to every member of the preschool set. Netflix might not be weeping today, but Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN  ) is playing the keeper as it has swooped in to nab distribution rights to a series of shows that Netflix recently passed on.

• [By Paul Ausick]

  By social media mentions, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) was the leader closely followed by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) and the NFL got about twice as many mentions as the Macy�� Thanksgiving Day Parade. And the term ��lack Friday��got more mentions in social media than did Thanksgiving Day.

• [By Steve Symington]

  Hold onto your hats, NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA  ) shareholders, because Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN  ) �may have just made things a whole lot more interesting for your favorite graphics chip specialist.

Best Internet Stocks To Watch For 2014: IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI)

IAC/InterActiveCorp engages in the Internet business in the United States and internationally. The company�s Search segment develops, markets, and distributes various downloadable toolbars; provides search, reference, and content services through its destination search and other Websites, including Ask.com and Dictionary.com; and aggregates and integrates local advertising and content for distribution to publishers on Web and mobile platforms, as well as markets and distributes mobile applications through which it provides search and additional services. Its Match segment offers subscription-based and advertiser-supported online personals services through its Websites comprising Match.com, Chemistry.com, OurTime.com, BlackPeopleMeet.com, and OkCupid.com, as well as through mobile applications and Meetic-branded Websites. The company�s ServiceMagic segment offers Market Match service that matches consumers with service professionals; Exact Match service, which enables con sumers to review service professional profiles and select the service professional that meets their specific needs; and 1800Contractor.com, an online directory of service professionals. This segment also offers Website design and hosting services. Its Media and Other segment operates CollegeHumor.com, an online entertainment Website that targets young males; Vimeo, a Website on which users can upload, share, and view video; and Pronto.com, a comparison search engine. This segment also engages in the creation of video content for various distribution platforms; and operates as an Internet retailer of footwear and related apparel and accessories, as well as focuses on multimedia business. The company was formerly known as InterActiveCorp and changed its name to IAC/InterActiveCorp in July 2004. IAC/InterActiveCorp was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Eric Volkman]

  AP/Jim Mone Is Bitcoin a slam-dunk as the currency of the future? The Sacramento Kings seem to think so. The NBA team recently became the first pro sports franchise to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. Basketball fans will be able not only to purchase tickets and merchandise online with the digital cryptocurrency, but also to use it to buy souvenirs at the arena come game time. The team is the latest in a growing number of commercial entities finding a slot in their virtual cash registers for Bitcoin. Little by little, momentum is building for a widespread acceptance of the upstart currency. Overstocking The Kings' drive towards the Bitcoin basket comes a week after the big online retailer Overstock.com (OSTK) announced it would start accepting payments in the currency. The move was an instant hit -- the first day the company had the nifty Bitcoin button as an option in its shopping cart, its customers used it to make more than 800 transactions for total sales of around $130,000. Overstock.com was by no means the first online marketplace to accept the currency. Numerous web retailers have been doing so for some time. It's a natural fit, %VIRTUAL-article-sponsoredlinks in a way, since Bitcoin exists solely in the digital realm. Customers booking flights on discount travel operator CheapAir.com, for example, can use Bitcoin to buy their tickets, as can love seekers on dating site OkCupid, owned by IAC/InteractiveCorp (IACI). These digital players are going to have plenty of company. Earlier this month, online games purveyor Zynga (ZNGA) started to dip its toes in the water, announcing that it was testing Bitcoin payments for some of its titles in conjunction with specialist transaction facilitator BitPay. But if Overstock.com didn't get there first, it's still the largest and most prominent e-retailer to take the Bitcoin plunge thus far. This is a big win for the currency and its advocates, and Overstock.com will surely be followed by more well-known comp