A few days ago we reported that Yahoo were to team up with television makers to provide a range of internet services through television sets. The move was exactly the kind of bold, ‘game changing’ kind of thing that was required of Yahoo, who have been faltering to say the least recently after a horrific 2008 that saw their lifesaving deal with Google disintegrate and a Microsoft buyout fall through, along with general staff losses and cutbacks.

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Talk of some kind of convergence between TV and the Internet has been talked about as long as people have been watching videos online. However, it appears that 2009 may just be the year that people start getting serious about making it a reality. This year we’ve already had the announcement of the new LG TV that allows you to download film and TV from certain bespoke sites, now it seems that Yahoo are getting in on the act, and committing to making full synergy between the two mediums a reality.
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This old chestnut again I’m afraid. According to a report in the Times, Microsoft and troubled search engine, Yahoo are attempting to hammer out a search deal and are thought to be close to agreement. The deal is reported to involve Microsoft buying the company’s search business – the Times has the figure being paid at about $20 million. If that’s accurate it would be a very good deal for Yahoo, especially considering that the market capitalization of the whole company is less than $16 billion.
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According to various online sources, Live Search’s days are numbered. The rumour is that software giant Microsoft has decided that Live Search needs a new persona and plans to rebrand the search engine next year, the rebrand will include a new name. For the time being at least, that name would appear to be, Kumo, after Microsoft bought the domain Kumo.com and began using internal traffic to test the new site.
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It would seem that there’s just no let up in the misery at Yahoo. Not even a week after their CEO Jerry Yang announced he is stepping down, and with key staff and engineers continuing to jump ship at an alarming rate, their shares have fallen to a five year low. 

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Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is set to resign his post. Amidst a plummeting stock price and widespread predictions that the company are on the way out, at least as an independent entity, the 40-year-old’s position would appear to be untenable.
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A longstanding problem for online advertisers has been that the Internet is simply too broad an advertising tool for many companies. In the grand scheme of things very few traditional companies actually need to reach a worldwide or even national audience. There is no real reason, for instance, why a hairdresser with three branches in Inverness really needs to have its online advertising viewed by people in Portsmouth.
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Regular followers of computer and technology news will know about the relentless misery currently confronting Yahoo. First their share price plummets, then Google backs out of their proposed ad sharing deal – widely considered as a last ditch effort to stay afloat -, now it seems Microsoft have lost all interest in buying the company after trying so aggressively to do so in the past. They are, to put it mildly, in some trouble.
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Predictably enough, Yahoo have launched an answer to Google Analytics. It’s called Yahoo Web Analytics and it loftily claims to provide a full featured analytics program, completely for free. The program is largely based on the Index Tools technology that Yahoo acquired when they bought the company, just like Google Analytics is based on what was Urchin, before Google bought it.
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Yahoo has taken the first step towards its long discussed social network revamp, unveiling a major redesign of its popular – some would even say industry leading – MyYahoo start page. The revamp moves it alongside some of its more feature-heavy rivals and involves use of new online technologies and content from some big-name partners. It’s also the first step on the road to a more open platform – the start page will now encourage third party applications from independent developers.
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Over the past months we’ve seen the big search engine players frantically unveiling plans to challenge Google and their dominance of the industry. Microsoft’s plan seems to mainly involve throwing vast sums of money around in an attempt to simply buy up the competition or bribe people to use LiveSearch. Yahoo’s, on the other hand, seems a little more nuanced and innovative. (more…)

In a move that Microsoft executives would have you believe marks a sea change in the war for domination of the search engine market, everyone’s favourite multinational technology giant has released an algorithm which, it claims, will prove to be the main competitor with, and eventually usurper of Google’s PageRank. Imaginatively they’ve called it BrowseRank.
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