Webicy Blog

November 6, 2008

Collapse of the Yahoo – Google Deal

Filed under: Google, Industry News — Tags: , , , , — SticKer @ 6:04 am

The much talked about Yahoo – Google Deal has finally collapsed. Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s chief executive says he felt let down by Google’s decision to pull out of a advertising agreement between the two internet rivals.

Yahoo’s lack of growth is the main reason behind all this. By next year, the company will have been through four consecutive years with virtually no increase in its cashflow, estimated Mark Mahaney, internet analyst at Citigroup. That is in spite of having one of the biggest global online audiences at a time when advertisers are making a historic shift to the internet, and is a clear sign that it needs to find a new strategic direction, he added.

The $800m deal – which would have enabled Google to sell advertising on some parts of Yahoo’s search engine listings – had been subject to a formal investigation by the US Department of Justice over potential antitrust concerns.

With Yahoo’s other options seemingly closed off, it is little surprise that all eyes yesterday turned back to Microsoft. But talking to an audience of internet entrepreneurs and investors, Yang said the collapse of takeover talks was “not personal” and that he harboured no ill will towards Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

“People who know me will know that I don’t have an ego about remaining independent,” he said. “I have a lot of respect for Steve and we’d had a lot of good conversations. From my perspective, it’s not personal.”

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology…6/yahoo-google
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/86e31826-a…077b07658.html

http://forums.webicy.com/showthread.php?t=7468

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July 15, 2008

Yahoo’s Jerry Yang warns employees

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , , — SticKer @ 1:22 am

According to Yahoo!, Microsoft teamed up with Carl Icahn with an offer to acquire the battered company’s flagship search engine on Friday night, under the condition that Yahoo! accept the deal within 24 hours.

Yahoo CEO and founder Jerry Yang sent an e-mail to employees warning them of the pending mess and offered a Q&A:

Subject: over the weekend — joint microsoft/carl icahn proposal

yahoos,

on friday evening, our board received a search and restructuring proposal from microsoft and carl icahn. in essence, this proposal would hand over to microsoft yahoo’s search business and the rest of the business to carl icahn. our board rejected this for a number of reasons, that boil down to a determination that this deal would be disadvantageous to yahoo stockholders. with our annual meeting quickly approaching on august 1, i want to give you an idea of what to expect over the coming days and weeks.

proposals and attacks by microsoft and carl icahn leading up to our meeting are likely to get even more contentious. i know this could is distracting at the very least. but i know that we can count on all of you to continue to focus on what we do best — transforming the experiences of our users, advertisers, publishers and developers. i also realize that you, and our customers and partners, may have additional questions. to address these, below is a brief faq that should help.

please be assured that the board, the management team, and i are all focused on doing what’s best for the business and our stockholders. we are prepared to let our stockholders, not microsoft and carl icahn, decide what is in their best interests. and we look forward to the upcoming vote at our stockholder meeting. thank you for your hard work and commitment to yahoo.

jerry

Source: news.cnet.com

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Google executive defends partnership with Yahoo

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , , , — SticKer @ 12:53 am

A Google Inc. executive defended the company’s proposed search advertising partnership with Yahoo Inc. in prepared congressional testimony released Monday, contesting the prevalent notion that it will only expand the market leader’s already considerable influence.

On June 12, Yahoo said it would run advertisements supplied by Google alongside search query results as part of a four-year deal estimated to bring Yahoo up to $800 million in revenue a year.

Search advertising by Google, search results by Yahoo, and a lot of scrutiny at the federal level received another layer of interest, this time from state governments.

Microsoft Corp.’s top attorney meanwhile countered in his own prepared testimony that the deal “would effectively create a monopoly in search advertising.”

Source: marketwatch.com

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June 10, 2008

Microsoft teams up with the biggest U.S. nonprofit HMO

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , — SticKer @ 8:31 am

Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest nonprofit health maintenance organization has teamed up with Microsoft to expand its HealthVault online medical records program.

The partnership was announced on Monday and they will be running a pilot project which will run until November. The pilot program aims to expand functionality to the personal e-health records of Kaiser Permanente employees (who are also Kaiser Permanente patients). Kaiser will offer 156,000 of its employees the opportunity to test the new program, which will combine Kaiser’s online health records with Microsoft’s applications for monitoring weight, allergies and other medical data, the companies said today in a statement.

Microsoft is battling it out with Google for this new market. One question is the security of health records. While Microsoft and Google both adhere to federal standards for data exchange and include lots of other protection, a single database with so much private info can be an awfully tempting target for a hacker. Microsoft’s success (as well as Google’s) will come down to how much people trust the company to secure their personal info. [Source: nytimes.com & informationweek.com]

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April 23, 2008

Microsoft announces Windows Live Mesh service

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , — SticKer @ 2:34 pm

Microsoft unveils Windows Live Mesh a service that gives you access to your docs from anywhere. Windows Live Mesh

Live Mesh is a service that will give you 5-gigabytes (GB) of online storage that is accessible from anywhere in the world, provided you’re on one of your Internet-connected devices (laptops, handsets, etc). The idea is that you would be able to store files in Live Mesh and modify them anywhere, synchronizing documents onto your devices so that you can take them offline, then pushing any changes back to the service the next time you connect. You’ll even be able to share documents with others and view and edit them on a virtual, online desktop.

Live Mesh pits Microsoft against companies like Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com which are already offering different varieties of so-called software-as-a-service systems.

This service will be initially offered for Windows XP and Vista users, Microsoft has said Live Mesh will also be rolled out to Apple Macs and other platforms. [Source BBC]

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Microsoft down with MSN Music DRM keys

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , — SticKer @ 2:17 pm

Playsforsure

Microsoft just announced that it will no longer supply authorization keys for songs purchased from the defunct MSN Music service.

Customers are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it’s done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.

If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully play. You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before August 31, 2008.

This doesn’t just apply to the five different computers that PlaysForSure allows users to authorize, it also applies to operating systems on the same machine (users need to reauthorize a machine after they upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, for example). Once September rolls around, users are committed to whatever five machines they may have authorized—along with whatever OS they are running.

Another option for MSN Music customers would be burning all of their music to audio CD and then re-ripping them back to the computer as MP3s. But that’s going to be a real pain.

[Via arstechnica]

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March 9, 2008

Microsoft’s CEO Talks About Google, Yahoo, Apple At MIX

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , , — SticKer @ 11:15 pm

“We’re in the game, and we’re the little engine that could, just working away, working away, working away,” Ballmer told interviewer and former Apple employee and evangelist Guy Kawasaki. “In online, yeah, it’s Google, Google, Google. I’d say we’re the underdog.” That’s a far cry from as recently as last year, when Ballmer called Google “cute” and a “one-trick pony.”

Source: informationweek.com

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March 6, 2008

Microsoft IE8 available for download

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , — SticKer @ 12:07 am

Microsoft IE8 available for download.

Earlier it was available to selected Beta testers only.

You can download it from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/Install.htm

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February 9, 2008

Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign Follow Yahoo! To Join OpenID

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , , , — SticKer @ 1:11 pm

Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the board of the OpenID Foundation, the organisation set up to facilitate access to multiple online services with a single username and password.

The move follows Yahoo! last month announcing that its accountholders would be able to use any web site supporting OpenID without creating a separate username and password. A year ago, Microsoft pledged to integrate OpenID 2.0 with the CardSpace identity management systems developed in conjunction with Windows Vista.

While the OpenID Foundation serves a stewardship role around the community’s intellectual property, the Foundation’s board itself does not make any decisions about the specifications the community is collaboratively building. However the Foundation claimed that “By bringing on these companies and their resources, the OpenID Foundation will now be able to better serve the needs of the entire OpenID community. In 2008, we can expect to see a larger focus on making OpenID even more accessible to a mainstream audience, the development of a World-wide trademark usage policy (much like the Jabber Foundation and Mozilla have done), and a larger international focus on working with the OpenID communities in Asia and Europe.”

At the beginning of 2006, there were less than 500 websites where OpenID could be used. Today there are well over 10,000, according to the Foundation.

Source: itwire.com

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February 6, 2008

Microsoft Releases Windows Server 2008

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , , , , — SticKer @ 11:48 am

5 years after the last server centric operating system from Microsoft, namely Windows Server 2003, Microsoft released Windows Server 2008 to RTM on February 4 2008. It is available for immediate download via Technet & MSDN.

Windows Server 2008 is a unique & different release in many manners compared to the old server operating systems. It is loaded with features of Windows Vista & reliability of Windows Server. For the first time ever Windows Sever 2008 installation is like Windows Vista, means a big image file which reduces the installation time.

However this isn’t all. Windows Server 2008 Is Microsoft`s Leanest, Meanest Yet. This is first version of Server OS which can be slimmed down to even a headless configuration & you can remove everything you don’t need from this server OS. The new Windows Server boasts a set of networking enhancements that dramatically boost file serving performance, and the product can be deployed in a new, stripped-down Server Core configuration, which significantly reduces the attack surface of systems hosting certain Windows Server roles.

It comes with IIS 7, Microsoft Hypervisor, Windows Powershell, Headless operation in form of Server Core installation & many other management enhancements. (more…)

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