Posted 11/19/08 at 10:35:38 AM by Paul Lilly

Yahoo co-founder and chief executive Jerry Yang has spent the better portion of 2008 staving off a takeover attempt by Microsoft that threatened to go hostile, a decision that hasn't always been a popular one with Yahoo shareholders. Nor has it sat well with the 10 percent of employees facing a job cut by the end of the year. Now, just 18 months after stepping into the role of CEO, Yang has announced his pending resignation and will return to his role as Chief Yahoo once a successor is in place.

"All of you know that I have always, and will always, bleed purple," Yang wrote in letter to all Yahoo employees. "I will always do what I think is right for this great company. While this step will be an adjustment for all of us, I know it’s the right one. I look forward to updating you on this process as soon as the board has developments to share, and will continue to do everything I can to make Yahoo! fulfill its full potential."

No front runner for the position of CEO has yet emerged, but Yang did say the board will consider both internal and external candidates. Hired to help in the search is international executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, with the overall effort being led by Roy Bostock, Yahoo's chairman of the board.

Does this change anything in terms of a takeover? Hit the jump and give us your prediction on where Yahoo goes from here.

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Yahoo, search, ceo, jerry yang, resignation

Posted 11/11/08 at 01:38:24 PM by Paul Lilly

Google's open-source Android platform may not have revolutionized the mobile industry just yet, but it has spurred some interesting comments among top level execs. Two weeks ago, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said that the current iteration of Android isn't "good enough to put the Sprint brand name on it," and taking it a step further, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer says he sees the move as being finanically unsound for Google.

"They can hire smart guys, hire a lot of people, blah dee blah dee blah, but you know they start out way behind, in a certain sense," Ballmer said while speaking at Telstra's annual investment day.

Ballmer went on to say that he doesn't understand Google's strategy, criticizing a product launch launch "that has no revenue model." But the potshots didn't end there. Ballmer further indicated that "Google doesn't exactly bubble to the top of the list of competitors we've got going in mobile." Oh snap!

Is Ballmer underestimating the potential of Google's Android platform? Hit the jump and give us your thoughts.

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microsoft, operating system, mobile, cell phone, Google, search, open source, OS, steve ballmer, adroid

Posted 11/08/08 at 09:58:50 PM by Justin Kerr

Ever heard the expression,” if you can’t beat them, join them”? It turns out this is an attitude shared by the executives over at Sensis, the advertising and directories arm of Australia’s largest telecommunications company Telstra. Starting in Q1 2009, all of the Sensis business listings will be incorporated into Google’s mapping service. Google will then be implemented to power the native search and mapping functionality on the site. Sensis’s decision has been widely criticized as an admission that could not compete with Google, but I would argue it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Many larger and deeper pocketed rivals have attempted to duplicate Google’s success over the years with arguably little to no lasting success.  Yahoo and Live search aside anyone else remember Cuil?

The announcement was made at Google’s headquarters and Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst said the deal would allow them to focus on their yellow pages business listings. Both parties have openly denied that any talks are taking place with regards to a merger, and according to Sensis the deal is only intended as a means to share revenue. Neither party is revealing any specifics as to the terms or financial agreements, but presumably Sensis determined it was the best way to save market share. According to Nielsen NetRatings, Google Maps serves just over 2.5 million Australian visitors, with a mere 1.2 million using the Sensis Wherels service. Even more dramatic are the search numbers with 9.3 million Australians using Google, and only 184,000 users choosing Sensis.

Another search engine bites the dust, can anyone take on Google? Hit the jump and let us know what you think.

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Software, Google, Yahoo, Maps, search, advertising, Live Search, australia, Cuil

Posted 11/07/08 at 02:57:26 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Harvard has fallen out with Google over the company’s recent announcement that it has reached an out-of-court settlement worth $125 million with authors and publishers. In view of the possible consequences of the settlement, Harvard has revoked its permission to Google to scan its in-copyright material for the Google Book Search service.

Harvard believes that the settlement will lend a commercial shade to the Google Book Search service and that “the settlement contains too many potential limitations on access to and use of the books by members of the higher-education community and by patrons of public libraries.” However, Google can blithely continue to scan Harvard’s out-of-copyright material.

Although the $25 million settlement is yet to be ratified by a judge, the Author’s Guild delightfully labeled it the "the biggest book deal in U.S. publishing history." The deal has opened the floodgates for millions of extra titles to be part of Google Book Search. Users will have the option of purchasing a book – the revenue will be split between Google, the publisher and the author – after previewing it; the service will allow them to preview 20 percent of the pages.

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Software, Internet, Preview, books, search, deal, Google book search, harvard, settlement, scans, fee

Posted 11/01/08 at 03:48:26 PM by Justin Kerr

Just when we thought search couldn’t get any better, Evin Levey  product manager at Google has blogged about a new feature that could have a dramatic impact on your search results. Scanned documents have been appearing in Google’s search results for quite some time now, but for the most part they were usually weren’t at the top your list regardless of how relevant they may have been. The reason for this is simple; when the search engine runs into an Adobe PDF file that was scanned as an image; it wasn’t able to read the contents other then what was contained within the meta tag. The article may well have been the definitive source on the topic for which you were searching, but until now they had no way of knowing what was in the document or sorting out key words in any type of automated fashion. On Thursday this all changed and it appears the search engine has successfully implemented a form of optical character recognition that can index the text for easy searching. This adds significant power to Google’s ability to catalog things such as books which are commonly achieved as images in PDF format.

Since millions of books are available as creative commons and scanning projects have been actively publishing these works to the web, the ability to search and find results will unlock countless additional sources of information.  Care to try out some examples of the new feature?

Click the jump to test this out for yourself.

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Software, Google, books, search, advertising, adobe pdf

Posted 10/31/08 at 03:14:10 PM by Alex Castle

We reported two weeks ago that the Yahoo-Google search advertising partnership was facing some serious challenges in its discussions with the Justice Department and, sure enough, it looks like the two search giants may decide to give up on the deal. The Wall Street Journal has reported that inside sources said that Google and Yahoo may soon announce their decision to drop the deal, after failing to reach an agreement with the Justice Department.

Nothing’s set in stone yet, though, and both companies official positions are still that negotiations are ongoing. Yahoo’s spokesman said “We believe strongly that this agreement will strengthen Yahoo’s competitive position in online advertising.” Google’s spokesman said in statement that “We are confident that the arrangement is beneficial to competition, but we are not going to discuss the details of the process.”

What will it mean for the oft-courted Yahoo if this deal falls through? Hit the jump and tell us what you think.

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Software, Google, Yahoo, search, advertising, department of justice

Posted 10/30/08 at 05:11:44 PM by Andy Salisbury

Straight out of the “surprise!” file, Microsoft’s Live search engine is down in usage while Yahoo’s has finally gained some ground. Despite Microsoft’s offering serious perks to the members of Club Internet to use their search engine, they just weren’t able to come through in traffic, as claimed by researcher ComScore Inc.

According to ComScore, Yahoo’s portion of the Internet search engine pie has gone up from 19.6 percent to 20.2 percent. Unfortunately for Microsoft though, their percentage has dropped from an already low 8.9 percent down to 8.5 percent. Not surprisingly, Google took care of 62.9 percent of the searches made, and still has a very demanding lead.

At this rate Microsoft is going to have to cook up some pretty exciting perks to lure users back over to Live. (Try this one out: “Search for a date with Scarlett Johansson.” Thank me later.)

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windows, microsoft, Google, Yahoo, search, Live Search

Posted 10/17/08 at 02:25:26 PM by Alex Castle

When it comes to search engine popularity, Yahoo must have gotten used to playing second fiddle to Google. However, things just got a little worse for the big Y, as YouTube received more search traffic in August than Yahoo, clinching the #1 and #2 spots for Google.

YouTube received 2.6 billion search queries on August, barely slipping past Yahoo’s 2.4 billion. Of course, both numbers pale in comparison to Google’s 7.6 billion searches. For the first time, if both of Google’s holdings’ searches are combined, it puts Google at more than 10 billion searches in a single month.

Yahoo’s perpetual suitor Microsoft, meanwhile, served up a combined 1.0 billion searches across all its sites.

Of course, the Yahoo and YouTube’s respective search engines perform largely different functions, making a direct comparison of the two a little futile, but the statistic does nicely illustrate the dominant position Google is establishing for itself in all different sectors of the Web.

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Software, Google, Yahoo, search, youtube