As I said in earlier post Yahoo to step up talks with Google

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As I said in my earlier post Yahoo Inc.’s negotiations with Google Inc. have intensified as Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang races to find alternatives to Microsoft Corp.’s unsolicited $44.6-billion takeover offer, a person familiar with the matter said Wednesday.

Yang told Yahoo employees in an e-mail that the board of directors was evaluating “a wide range of potential strategic alternatives” and had “made no decisions” about the Microsoft bid, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He did not offer specifics, but the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet company has hired investment banks Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Lehman Bros. to evaluate options.

Analysts said Yahoo’s best hope for maintaining its independence would be a search advertising pact with Google, which generates significantly more revenue for each search query than does Yahoo. Although it could raise antitrust concerns, such a pact could open the door for rival bids, other financing deals or a sweetened offer from Microsoft.

Neither company would comment on the discussions.

No “white knights” have emerged, with News Corp. and others saying they were not interested.

“Jerry is as motivated as hell to try anything he can,” a person familiar with the matter said. “Google is hyper-competitive and it wants to do anything it can, any time it can, to stop Microsoft from getting one foot in the door.”

Former executives say Yahoo has long considered turning over its search advertising business to Google, most recently in Europe. Doing so would mean that Google would place paid ads on Yahoo search pages, and the two companies would share the money generated. That would dramatically increase revenue and cut costs for Yahoo, a step that analysts have long called for.

Google generated 71.2% of U.S. search-advertising revenue in 2007, dwarfing Yahoo’s 8.9%, according to research firm EMarketer Inc. A Citigroup Inc. analyst estimated that Yahoo could boost its cash flow by 25% by outsourcing its search business to Google.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has determined that it cannot bid for Yahoo because of regulatory hurdles. Even a partnership between the two biggest search providers would raise concerns about competition in online advertising, antitrust experts said. But such a deal could help Yahoo regain investor confidence, which has slipped as it continues to struggle under Yang’s leadership. Yang, who co-founded Yahoo, took over for ousted CEO Terry Semel last summer.

Yahoo rejected advances from Microsoft last year when Yahoo’s stock price was much higher. Microsoft made the $31-a-share bid Friday. Google CEO Eric Schmidt phoned Yang that day to offer the assistance of the search giant.

Yahoo has not set a timetable for responding to Microsoft. Analysts say pressure will mount on Yahoo to make a decision in coming weeks.

“This is an unsolicited offer, so it is clear this was not Yahoo’s first choice,” said Ellen Siminoff, who worked with Yang at Yahoo and now heads search-engine marketing firm Efficient Frontier.

By bidding for Yahoo, Microsoft is looking to secure a larger stake in Web advertising and search to take on Google. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said the combination would create a stronger No. 2 challenger to Google.

Google has launched a campaign in Washington to challenge the proposed deal. The company’s lobbyists are asking regulators to scrutinize the proposed merger, saying it raises competitive issues.

This marks an escalation in the acrimony between Google and Microsoft, which increasingly compete on numerous fronts. Google is challenging Microsoft’s dominance in desktop software by expanding its online offerings of word processing, spreadsheets and other software. Google plans to release a version today that allows teams to more easily collaborate.

source:latimes

Google planning free music downloads in China

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Web search leader Google is planning to boost its presence in China by tying up with a Chinese online music company to provide free music downloads, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The report, quoting people close to the situation, said Google was in the late planning stages of a venture and will likely offer access to tunes from three global music companies as well as dozens of smaller brands.

The service could start in the next several weeks barring any last-minute problems, it said.

The move would come as Google struggles to wrestle market share from Baidu.com, which dominates the Chinese search market and offers music search.

Google representatives were not immediately available for comment.

China’s search engine market reached 946.6 million yuan ($131 million) in the fourth quarter — almost double from a year earlier, according to a research firm.

Baidu.com led the market in the fourth quarter with a 60.1% share, said Analysys International, while Google came second with a 25.9% share, followed by Yahoo China with 9.6%.

source:usatoday 

 

Google Releases Code to Make Social Data Portable

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Google has unveiled a new API that it hopes will make data created by users of social networks portable.

The Social Graph API makes information about the connections people have with each other on different Web sites easily available, said Brad Fitzpatrick, a Google software engineer. Once the data is available, developers can solve the problem of requiring users to search for and add friends to new social applications and sites every time they join them, noted Fitzpatrick in a blog post.

“[The new API] makes information about the public connections between people on the Web easily available and useful,” he wrote. “You can make it easy for users to bring their existing social connections into a new website and as a result, users will spend less time rebuilding their social networks and more time giving your app the love it deserves.”

This is better than asking users to search for and add their friends – because they likely will tire of the chore if its required for very social network, he added.

The API, unveiled late last week, crawls the Web to find publicly declared relationships between people’s accounts, just like Google crawls the Web for links between pages, Fitzpatrick explained. But instead of returning links to HTML documents, the API returns data structures representing the social relationships discovered. When a user signs up for a new application, a developer can use the API to remind them who they’re friends with on other sites and ask them if they want to be friends on the new site, Google said.

Social Graph marks Google’s latest effort to make content created on social networks more easily shareable across the Web. Last month, Google and Facebook both announced plans to join the Data Portability Project, which is working on standards to allow user-generated content to be more easily shared among social networking sites.

Josh Catone, a blogger at Read Write Web, noted that the Google API could be an important tool in the data portability movement because “it allows users to find and evaluate their public social connections and take control of that information. As more and more users are beginning to suffer the effects of ‘social networking fatigue,’ anything that helps automate and make easier the process of adding your existing connections to a new network is a useful tool.”

 source:pcworld

Yahoo may consider Google alliance

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Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay wrote in a research note that “the Microsoft bid of $31 is very astute” because it puts pressure on Yahoo management to take actions that could unlock the underlying value of Yahoo assets, which he estimates are worth upward of $39-$45 a share.

Separately, Google Inc fired back on Sunday at Microsoft Corp’s bid to acquire Yahoo Inc, accusing Microsoft of seeking to extend its computer software monopoly deeper into the Internet realm.

David Drummond, a Google senior vice president and its chief legal officer, said in a blog post that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo could undermine competition on the Web and called on policy makers to challenge the combination.

Microsoft responded to Google’s arguments by saying that a merger with Yahoo would create a “compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising” to market leader Google.

“The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet,” Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in a statement.

Drummond argued that Microsoft’s power stems from decades- old monopolies in Windows — the software operating system used to control most personal computers — and Internet Explorer, which is the dominant browser consumers used to view the Web.

Microsoft’s proposed merger with Yahoo would combine the No. 1 and No. 2 suppliers of Web-based e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and portals, which act as starting points for hundreds of millions of users seeking information on the Web.

The Google executive argued in an official blog post that Microsoft could be looking to favor Microsoft and Yahoo services by pushing customers to other Web services they own instead of letting customers elect to use rival services.

“Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ email, IM, and Web-based services?” Drummond said in a blog at googleblog.blogspot.com.

 source:reuters

Googles ‘New’ Mobile Search Engine

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Shortly before releasing their latest results showing a slowdown in advertising sales in the fourth quarter of 2007, Google announced the launch of their ‘new’ mobile search engine (or, should we say, the improved version of the previous one).

Google says that with the new search service, mobile phone users will get results that best fit what they’re looking for, with search results combined from different bodies of information, so users don’t need to sift through both mobile and regular web results, or specify their search type. Instead, Google will search through the whole web, mobile web, news articles, local business listings, and image index to get the information needed and then provide the most relevant results. A search for cats, for example, provides links to photos of cats as well as web pages.

Google’s new mobile search also improves the local search experience. By remembering a user’s recent search locations, the new service is said to provide relevant local results in subsequent searches-no need to retype the location every time. Once a user has entered a location, searches for weather or restaurants, for example, provide information tailored specifically to that user’s location. The service is now available in the UK, France, Germany and Canada. It has been available in the US since March last year.

It is claimed that fewer clicks will now be necessary to access meaningful search results on mobile devices, which is a welcome improvement. The jury is still out as to how effective the new search engine is, but while we may not be there in terms of ultimate functionality, it is clearly a step in the right direction. Bizarrely, we still have to type in “http://mobile.google.com” instead of just “http://google.mobi” or “http://m.google.com”, but that’s a different story…

 

source:reuters 

Google and Dell to announce gPhone hardware?

gphone

Marketing Week reports that “speculation is mounting that Google is plotting the launch of a mobile phone in partnership with computer giant Dell”.

Citing “senior industry sources” the site says that the two companies are due to reveal their plans to the world at next month’s 3GSM event in Spain.

The first handsets are expected this year running Google’s “Android” mobile phone operating system, but Dell has not previously been hotly tipped to be one of the first manufacturers to market.

Pocket-lint will be attending 3GSM and will bring you all the news from the event as it happens.

source:sky