单选题 Attacking an increasingly popular Internet business practice, a consumer watchdog group Monday filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, asserting that many online search engines are concealing the impact special fees have on search results by Internet users. Commercial Alert, a 3-year-old group founded by consumer activist Ralph Nader, asked the FTC to investigate whether eight of the Web's largest search engines are violating federal laws against deceptive advertising.
The group said that the search engines are abandoning objective formulas to determine the order of their listed results and selling the top spots to the highest bidders without making adequate disclosures to Web surfers. The complaint touches a hot-button issue affecting tens of millions of people who submit search queries each day. With more than 2 billion pages and more than 14 billion hyperlinks on the Web, search requests rank as the second most popular online activity after E-mail.
The eight search engines named in Commercial Alert's complaint are: MSN, owned by Microsoft; Netscape, owned by AOL Time Warner; Directhit, owned by Ask Jeeves; HotBot and Lycos, both owned by Term Lycos; Altavista, owned by CMGI; LookSmart, owned by LookSmart; and iWon, owned by a privately held company operating under the same name.
Portland, Ore.-based Commercial Alert could have named more search engines in its complaint, but focused on the biggest sites that are auctioning off spots in their results, said Gary Ruskin, the group's executive director.
"Search engines have become central in the quest for learning and knowledge in our society. The ability to skew (扭曲) the results in favor of hucksters (小贩) without telling consumers is a serious problem. " Ruskin said. By late Monday afternoon, three of the search engines had responded to The Associated Press' inquiries about the complaint. Two, LookSmart and AltaVista, denied the charges. Microsoft spokesman Matt Pilla said MSN is delivering "compelling search results that people want".
The FTC had no comment about the complaint Monday. The complaint takes aim at the new business plans embraced by more search engines as they try to cash in on their pivotal (关键) role as Web guides and reverse a steady stream of losses. To boost revenue, search engines in the past year have been accepting payments from businesses interested in receiving a higher ranking in certain categories or ensuring that their sites are reviewed more frequently.

单选题 The consumer group complained about______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 消费者的抱怨内容从文章第一段第二行“asserting that many online search engines are concealing the impact special fees have on search results by Internet users．”可以看出，搜索引擎隐瞒了网络使用者得到搜索结果的特殊费用，可以看出这个机构是抱怨用户被收取了特殊费用，所以答案是A。
单选题 ______is the most popular activity online.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 什么是网上最受欢迎的活动呢?从文章第二段最后一句“search requests rank as the second most popular online activity after E-mail．(搜索的需求是网上仅次于E-mail的第二大受欢迎的活动”可以看出，网上最受欢迎的活动是收发E-mail。因此B项为正确答案。
单选题 Which of the following is NOT a correct statement______?
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 本题不正确的阐述是B项，依据是文章第三段的开头“The eight search engines named in Commercial Alert's complaint are…”，下面接着具体列举了这8种搜索引擎，可见Commercial Alert主要是投诉了这8种搜索引擎，所以B说不只8个是不正确的。
单选题 All the following share one similarity EXCEPT______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 从文章的第三段可以看出，LookSmart、CMGI和Microsoft都是拥有搜索引擎的公司的名字，只有C是CMGI公司所拥有的搜索引擎的名字，所以说A、B、D三项都是公司，而C项是搜索引擎，故C项与其他不同。
单选题 The primary aim of some companies' sponsoring the search engines is to______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 从文章的最后一句“To boost revenue，search engines in the past year have been accepting payments from businesses interested in receiving a higher ranking in certain categories or ensuring that their sites are reviewed more frequently．(为了增加收入，搜索引擎在过去几年里接受了一些公司的资助，这些都是想在同类中提高地位或者愿意使网站被人们经常浏览的公司)”可知，资助搜索引擎的公司的目的就是让自己的网站被上网者多多浏览，D项正符合这个含义。
单选题 In the last sentence of the passage, the word "reviewed" means______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 本题考查对词语的理解。