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 YahooGoogle 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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March 9, 2008

Yahoo OnePlace: bookmarking tool for cell phones

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , — SticKer @ 11:24 pm

Yahoo on Tuesday unveiled a new bookmarking tool for cell phones that lets people keep track of favorite Web content–news feeds, search results, Web sites–from one place on their handheld.

The technology, called Yahoo OnePlace, will be available in the second quarter of 2008, according to Yahoo.

The tool builds on other new mobile applications from Yahoo. Those include OneConnect, a tool to update social-networking messaging on the phone (announced in February), and OneSearch, which aggregates news, weather, financial data, photos, and Web links based on search queries.

Source: news.com

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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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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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January 31, 2008

Yahoo Launches OpenID 2.0

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , , — SticKer @ 4:43 am

The Yahoo! OpenID (beta) which was announced earlier this month has just been launched. You can try it out right away.

This is expected to move the OpenID movement ahead considerably. All 250 million members of Yahoo are now able to log in to any website, not just Yahoo, that supports OpenID 2.0.

At this moment you can find very limited list at Yahoo which I hope will be expanded soon.
openid.yahoo.com

Related Posts:

Yahoo Implements OpenID 2.0

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January 22, 2008

Proximic hopes to beat Google AdSense

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , , , , — SticKer @ 2:14 pm

If the internet has proven anything, it’s that you don’t have to be big to beat the best. That may very well be the mantra of Proximic, a 14-man German startup that is looking to take down Google’s AdSense.

While others focus on beating Google at search, Proximic hopes to beat AdSense by syndicating product listings as contextual ads. Proximic recently signed syndication deals with eBay’s Shopping.com and Yahoo’s shopping network.

The technology used by Proximic will allow web publishers to place an ad widget on their site that indexes the page and serves contextually relevant ads. By combining inventory from eBay, Yahoo and other sources, Proximic estimates it will have a total of about 50 million ads.

But inventory may not be Proximic’s greatest strength. According to Thomas Nitsche, the company’s CTO, Proximic uses proximity analysis to determine relevance.

“We look at patterns of letters,” Nitsche told TechCrunch. “We get a profile. The profile is a vector. We compare two vectors, and compute proximity by pattern distance. We can generate proximity between texts. The text can be one word, two words, 15 words, or a complete page.”

Translation: Proximic won’t be using semantic or keyword methods to place ads. So far, eBay and Yahoo, which previously hadn’t syndicated their ads elsewhere, are betting that Proximic may have found a strong alternative to AdSense.

Source: imediaconnection

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January 18, 2008

Yahoo Implements OpenID 2.0

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , , — SticKer @ 11:23 am

Having to remember different passwords to sign onto various Web sites is a major annoyance in the Internet age.

On Thursday, a project aimed at ending the inconvenience by enabling a common log-in got a big boost when Yahoo Inc. unveiled plans to test the system starting Jan. 30.

The Sunnyvale company’s support gives the project, called OpenID, a major backer with 248 million users. It joins a smattering of smaller Web sites including LiveJournal, Smugmug and Technorati that already have joined the fold, representing another 120 million accounts.

Tired of having to remember multiple user names and passwords for different sites? OpenID provides one sign-on that will work for many Web services. To find out more, go to openid.yahoo.com.

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January 15, 2008

Checking Backlinks For A Domain

Filed under: Miscellaneous — Tags: , , , , — SticKer @ 3:21 am

For those who don’t know here is a way how you can check backlinks for a domain in Google, Yahoo and MSN

For Google type in link:domain.com in the search bar.
For Yahoo use: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
For MSN type in linkdomain:domain.com in the search bar.

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