Recently in Yahoo Category

So today is a big one for Yahoo!  Not only did they once again rebuff Miscrosoft's takeover bid as undervaluing their company (thanks to tumbling stock values the once $44.6 Billion offer is now valued at $42.2 Billion).  Additionally, perhaps in a move to show how strong it is as its own company, Yahoo! announced a new ad sales system.  The new system is called AMP! and will (hopefully) allow Yahoo! to compete with a post-DoubleClick Google and a post-aQuantive Miscrosoft.

 

So what makes AMP! so special?  It will allow customer who buy advertising from Yahoo! to spread those ads around over a variety of web sites and even newspapers.  AMP! makes sense to me, because we all know how much everyone loves bundled services.  Think about it in the consumer world as opposed to the corporate world for a second.  People love the Comcast Triple Play because it allows them to have TV, internet and telephone services all billed to the same account.

 

From the perspective of an ad purchaser, AMP! makes a ton of sense.  Do you want to (or are you able to) manage advertising buys across potentially hundreds of web sites and newspapers?  I'm no expert, but I think I'd lose it if I were tasked with that.  Additionally, AMP! will help companies reach customers they didn't know they had - AMP! can target much smaller, niche sites that might otherwise get missed.

 

In a way, Microsoft's bid for Yahoo! has helped the Sunnyvale internet phenom examine themselves and find ways to improve.  When your company is in trouble (or is at least perceived to be) it would be really tempting to say "$44.6 Billion?  Where do I sign, Ballmer?"  Instead, Yahoo! has been going crazy with innovations, AMP! being perhaps the biggest and best so far.

 

If the MS bid totally falls apart, the job situation may be better too.  We all know that ,ergers/buyouts lead to layoffs, especially at the top.  Would MicroHoo! really need, for example, 2 CFO's?  Anything that doesn't contribute to the number of unemployed is something I can get behind.

 

I know I've been saying it a lot, but once again I'm excited to see what happens next.

 

Details on the bid refusal at Reuters.

Details on AMP!, also at the Reuters.

Only 24 hours after Mark Zuckerberg's pretty sound recovery from the disastrous Sara Lacy "keynote" at SXSW, in which he took questions but still refused to give details on how much access to Facebook Platform he would give developers, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reports that Yahoo! may join Google's OpenSocial initiative:

Yahoo is in late stage discussions with Google to join their OpenSocial platform, says a NYTimes story from earlier this evening. Multiple sources at both Yahoo and Google confirm to us that discussions are happening, but won't say when an announcement might be made.

This would be a major win for Google, which has already enticed MySpace and other big partners to a platform that launched less than five months ago. OpenSocial is a defense by Google and it's partners against the runaway success of Facebook Platform, itself less than a year old. Both platforms allow third parties to create applications that will run on OpenSocial partner sites, or Facebook, as the case may be.

Wow. If Zuckerberg is shy about revealing plans for Platform, he'd better get over it quick before developers go with the tried-and-true instead of the white-and-blue (ouch, that was awful, but it's 1am so leave me alone). 

As we posted here forever ago, Rupert Murdoch has officially decided not to make a bid for Yahoo!.

 

Here's a snippet from Reuters

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch said on Monday his News Corp would not get into a fight with Microsoft Corp over Yahoo Inc, confirming what most industry and Wall Street observers suspected.

 

 

 

 

Not much has changed - News Corp and FOX still have a really good online strategy and staying away from a bidding war over Yahoo! still seems like the right move.  I mean not-move.

Yesterday, those of us who got to Politics Online early enough were treated to a sneak peak of Yahoo!'s new political ad platform. They've taken a novel approach to placing candidate ads, with a whole division devoted to making sure that this sometimes sleazy business is conducted on the up-and-up. In other words, they're not being evil. 

Utah's State Legislature is considering allowing "pre-censored" Internet providers and giving them a special label, according to the Deseret News:

Utah Internet service providers could earn a state-approved "G-rating" for filtering content and insuring that users could not access pornography under provisions in a bill heard by a House committee on Monday.

HB407, sponsored by Rep. Michael Morley, R-Spanish Fork, would require the Utah Division of Consumer Protection to create a designation for providers who prevent access to "prohibited" material. After attaining the "seal of approval," providers would be subject for fines up to $10,000 for violating requirements.

"It's very difficult to figure out a way to monitor the internet," Morley said. "I think it's a positive thing for those who are looking for a site that is dedicated to fighting pornography."

The opponents are Google, Yahoo, etc. Obviously they'd see a decrease in traffic from some Utahn customers, but actually I see this as a good thing. While I'm not a fan of filtering, I do think that it's up to parents to choose what is appropriate for their children. If they want to leave it up to an ISP instead of having to constantly update software that their kids could possibly get around, more power to them. If the market is there for these kinds of "G-rated" ISPs, good for them. Let them make bank.

THE federal Government's plan to have internet service providers filter pornography and other internet content deemed inappropriate for children is going full-steam ahead.

Trials are to be conducted soon in a closed environment in Tasmania.

Today is the deadline for expressions of interest to Enex TestLab, the Melbourne company evaluating internet service provider content filters on behalf of the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

ISP-based filters will block inappropriate web pages at service provider level and automatically relay a clean feed to households.

To be exempted, users will have to individually contact their ISPs.The trial will evaluate ISP-level internet content filters in a controlled environment while filtering content inappropriate for children, Enex said. 

Utah wants an opt-in, market-based solution, while Australia thinks that everyone needs to be "protected" by default and have to go "waltzing matilda" to get out of the filtering system. I'm not so sure why Google and Yahoo! are opposing the Utah bill and not screaming bloody murder about the Aussies. Content providers should support allowing people to choose to not receive their content, that way they can realize how much they use it when it's gone. Let parents get frustrated with their filtered service until they cancel it. 

A California Appellate court (that's Santa Clara County, home of Silicon Valley) upheld the anonymity of a poster, referred to as Doe6, who posted blatantly negative remarks about a Florida-based company and one of its officers. Said officer wanted the ISP (Yahoo!) to reveal the identity of 10 different posters to a financial forum who were, let's just say less-than-glowing in their review of the company. 

For those of you who aren't in the know (like myself, sometimes), meebo is cool. Please note the lack of sarcasm there. meebo is actually very very cool.
meebo let's you log into your favorite IM (Instant Messenger) client through your internet browser. It's really useful if you're going online from a public computer or, like me, you want to get on AIM at work but can't download the app.
Load up meebo.com and get treated to a wonderfully simple (maybe even elegantly so) home screen. You have the ability to sign on to one (or all) of the big four IM clients (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, and Google Talk) with an option to sign on as invisible. Don't worry, ICQ and Jabber-heads. If you click the "more networks" link you'll be relieved. There's even a fifth option to sign on to meebo's proprietary IM client as well.

There's a "rooms" feature on the home page too. "meebo rooms" are chat rooms based on interests. You can even create your own room and get supplied with the code to embed it wherever you want. There's even an option that allows you to include a video player in said room so that you can throw in a link to your favorite YouTube video and share it with the group. I couldn't get it to load up on my personal blog, but WordPress has been a little wonky today. Throwing the code into the MySpace (which hasn't been touched in months) worked just fine. In fact, it worked perfectly.

The third big thing is meebome (meebo me). This one allows you to create an IM widget to place on your page or blog. Once you embed the code just log in to meebo and see who's trying to chat with you through your site.

It's so simple! Whenever I review a product, a key feature is ease of use. A great product is totally nerfed if it takes you 3 weeks and a masters' degree in the black arts to get it set up. The first time I visited the site I could figure out in about 2 seconds (I was sleepy) how to get logged in to my IM of choice. meebome and rooms took a sec, but if you follow the steps you'll catch on and be ready to embed your room or widget in just a couple of minutes.

I think that meebo is a great site/product/service and it's no wonder to me why CNNMoney picked them as a 2007 Startup to Watch. I certainly will.

Check out meebo.com for the full scoop. Don't forget to check out the blog and go meebo - where you can view and upload videos about meebo.

Slightly dated from Valleywag:

 

A tipster chimes in to tell us that Silicon Valley's OC-80 addiction took firm hold in one of its fastest-declining companies, Yahoo.

Right now I'm working a contract for a company and the last person i interviewed with -- a former Yahoo employee -- asked who I knew at Yahoo. I told him and he's like ohhhh yeah all the great times, i remember we'd do OC and other stuff in the bathrooms.

So. Well. Sniff. Do you, Yahoo?

Obviously Yahoo!'s coders were not really up to snuff since we all know Real Programmers  subsist entirely on highly caffeinated beverages purchased from ThinkGeek.

Moral of the story? It's ok for your VC to be  so blitzed out of his mind that he keeps handing you money. We don't reccomend coders indulge in things that make you sleepy. I guess the Valley equivilant of "hugs not drugs" should be "wired not fired"

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to pull down whether or not Congress has a unified drug policy/testing program for its' Members and staff. We know about Patrick Kennedy's little ambien problem (but the Kennedy's don't really count for this kind of thing, they get a family exemption) but really, would there be more innovative legislation and policymaking coming out of my side of the country if Congress (and the FCC, for that matter) got a little "creative?"

Hell, AOL was the last major tech company in the DC area, despite the Northern Virginia wish to be crowned the Silicon Valley of the East (that would probably belong to Research Triangle Park in NC). Maybe we'd have more inter-coastal innovative competition of this side of things had more stuffed noses and fewer stuffed shirts.

 (not that I'm serious, of course...)

 

It was rumored all over that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is going to try and outbid MS for Yahoo!.  It has now been equally reported that that will not happening. News Corp. is, in my opinion, playing smarter.  They have MySpace under their corporate umbrella and are using it to expand their own online ad sales. Granted, News Corp. bought MySpace - they didn't create it.  But that purchase makes more sense to me than MS's (potential purchase) of Yahoo!. News Corp. didn't go after a languishing number 2 in an attempt to bolster its own faltering business.  Instead, it bought a social networking powerhouse and is leveraging that strength to propel its own internet activities and revenues.  Sometimes no move is the smart move. Unless, of course, Yahoocrosoft kicks everyone's collective asses and I'm left here to eat a large amount of crow.

With all the bloggy talk over the weekend about the attempted MSFT-Yahoo deal, Farhad Manjoo (of salon.com) asks a really good question:

Microsoft, why do you think this is a good idea? How ever do you think it will work? ... For instance, take this problem: Microsoft is wedded to Windows and Office, its cash cows. In order to succeed, though, it needs to innovate around those monopolies, to develop applications that can compete with "cloud computing" initiatives like Google Apps -- but that may also present competition to Windows and Office. How will a combined company deal with that basic dilemma -- that Microsoft may need to cannibalize Windows to save itself -- any better than MS has on its own?

I'll let him handle it from now on, I think...