How can customers be expected to know what they need?” Mr. Cerf said. He compared Internet protocols to the internal workings of a car engine. “It’s like changing a gear in a car’s transmission,” he said. “People shouldn’t have to worry about that.

While the younger generation is losing interest in blogging, people approaching middle age and older are sticking with it.

Elliot Schrage, the vice president for global communications, public policy and marketing at Facebook, declined to discuss Facebook’s role in the recent tumult and what it might mean for the company’s services.

Google’s service, called Google One Pass, is a way for online publishers to sell digital content on the Web and through mobile applications using Google’s existing payment service, Google Checkout. Readers will be able to get access to that content on many devices using their Google e-mail address and password.

If, as many predict, Watson defeats its human opponents on Wednesday, much will be made of the philosophical consequences of the machine’s achievement. Moreover, the I.B.M. demonstration also foretells profound sociological and economic changes.

Even though an Indian dating site wasn’t their original concept, the Ignighter founders decided to pivot at a crucial moment, he says: “You have to be flexible as an entrepreneur and bend to the market and consumer feedback.”

Flash cookies can be used to restore HTML cookies that have been deleted from a user’s computer, circumventing a user’s privacy settings.

Part of Japan’s problem, Mr. Kazdal said, is a growing gap in tastes between players there and overseas. The most popular games in Japan are linear, with little leeway for players to wander off a defined path. In the United States, he said, video games have become more open, virtual experiences.