I wrote two things for today's NYT business section. The first is the "New Economy" column: Sites Become Dependent on Google. It's a look at how some commercial sites are coming to rely on Google referrals for traffic and sales.

Also a little dig at the user-unfriendly e-mail policies of MP3.com: Enter Maze, and Find the Opt-Out Cheese. If you want to listen to music on the site, you have to provide an e-mail address, which is immediately signed up for six mailing lists. Getting removed from them can be tricky.