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| UPDATED: 2008-08-01 |
 Yahoo, Investors Face Off Today Yahoo's annual meeting takes place amid the fallout of a failed takeover bid by Microsoft, a failed proxy fight for control of the company by Carl Icahn, and plenty of shareholders wondering why they should be happy about missing out on a rich payday.
Yahoo Board Gains Legg Mason's Support A major institutional investor opted to throw its backing behind the existing Yahoo board of directors, rather than an alternative slate promoted by activist investor Carl Icahn.
Bill Gates Departs Microsoft The world's wealthiest and most iconic tech geek will devote his years to a massive philanthropic effort aimed at eradicating childhood diseases.
Ballmer: We Can Do A Lot With $50 Billion The game of will they/won't they acquire Yahoo continues, as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer bragged to the media about having money to play with means a deal with Yahoo isn't a necessity.
Amazon, New York In Tax Spat Amazon.com launched its response to New York's attempt to force it to collect state sales taxes by filing a lawsuit.
Yahoo Juggles Its Options With Microsoft The board of directors faces a ticking clock at Yahoo, as a week has passed since Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer promised Yahoo they needed to make a decision on Microsoft's takeover bid in 3 weeks.
Feds Flatten 3Com Purchase By Bain, Huawei National security concerns looked like an insurmountable obstacle, causing Bain Capital and China's Huawei Technologies to back off a $2.2 billion bid for 3Com.
Browser Market Seeing Netscape Depart Microsoft turned Internet browsing from an application license driven economy to one supported by advertising and deals with search engines for default placement.
Chambers: Slow Spending Hurting Tech Sector Cisco CEO John Chambers gave the market a cold bath with his assessment of the economy, and its impact on technology spending for 2008. Now it's Cisco taking a dip.
eBay Rises On Outperform Rating Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck thinks the online marketplace will step up in its Wall Street performance this year.
Startup Plans WiFi Where Google Failed Plans for free wireless access for San Francisco could come to fruition if a startup called Meraki can do what Google and EarthLink could not: satisfy the local bureaucracy.
Chris Sacca Dumps Google For Investing Career The main person spearheading Google's WiFi efforts will jump from the Googleplex at the end of December.
Google To Bid On Wireless Spectrum Speculation on Google's intent upon participating in the FCC's 700MHz wireless auction next year reached its terminus when the company confirmed it will bid for the spectrum.
Apple Freed From Option Backdating Lawsuit Apple received an early holiday present as its request for dismissal of a suit against CEO Steve Jobs and other company executives earned a California judge's approval.
Digg This: Wall Street Journal Adds Buttons Only one website's buttons appear on Wall Street Journal stories, inviting readers to share articles, and those buttons belong to Digg.
ValueClick Flat On Q3 Profit The Federal Trade Commission has been looking into ValueClick's lead generation model, which likely contributed to weakness in that part of the business.
Oracle Waves $6.66B At BEA Web middleware provider BEA has an all-cash offer on the table from Oracle for $6.66 billion, an acquisition that would put Oracle against IBM for the application server market.
DivX: Yahoo's Possible YouTube Killer? The video tools company DivX will shift away from promoting Google's toolbar to Yahoo's in early November, as part of a new two-year deal.
Google: DoubleClick Deal Not Privacy Motivator Google has faced intense and sometimes bitter scrutiny over its proposed acquisition of ad network DoubleClick, but Google's forthcoming privacy standard proposal doesn't stem from that deal.
JAVA Becomes Sun's Face On Wall Street Sun Microsystems plans to retire its SUNW ticker symbol in favor of JAVA, in order to better represent what the company focuses on these days.
Answers.com Smacked By Google Algorithm The company recently made a $100 million purchase of the domain name Dictionary.com and the firm that owned it. Answers is about to learn the wisdom of that investment.
Google, Microsoft Reveal Quarterly Earnings The competitors presented different results to their investors this week, with Google missing earnings by 3 cents while Microsoft closed its fiscal year with a 7 percent increase in profit.
Apple iPhone Battery Program Draws Ire The positive press and big financial boost from the sale of as many as 500,000 iPhones may be tempered by the harsh reality of Apple's policies.
Bad News For PayPal: Google Checkout Google's alternative payment system has been gaining on eBay's PayPal by gaining greater adoption than the streamlined PayPal Express service.
Internet Ad Revenue Neared $5B For Quarter The first quarter of 2007 saw online ad spending reach $4.9 billion, 26 percent more than the same period last year.
ValueClick Probe Could Thwart Yahoo Deal The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating the business practices of online marketing services firm ValueClick, which could scuttle any potential for a possible purchase by Yahoo.
Google Will Buy Small, Won't Split Investors looking for a stock split from Google will have to keep on waiting, as CEO Eric Schmidt let reporters in on the company's new tagline - "Search, Ads and Apps."
ACS Offer Increased Amid Testy Discussion Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) chairman and founder Darwin Deason has boosted the bid to $6.1 billion for the company, but the board of directors has proved reluctant to run with his offer.
The Balance: Work PCs, Non-Work Tasks Corporate masters want to keep their staff tethered to the computer for as long as possible, even going so far as to bring in a variety of perks to retain them in the office. Doing real life tasks on a work machine can bring an unenlightened response from the bosse
Online Travel: Expedia Soars, Travelocity Sells A $4.5 billion deal will take Travelocity's parent company Sabre Holdings private; Expedia should show strong growth as their advertising efforts hook in their audience.
The Internet Teams Against YouTube Online video and Big Media content will merge with potent brand name advertisers as two YouTube foes will take on Google's video sharing site with a competitive offering.
Cisco WebEx Buy Could Quickly Crater A router intensive application like WebEx video conferencing may drive more sales of Cisco's signature networking hardware, but a newcomer to the field of broadcasting content online may lessen the need for brand new routers around the Web.
Google Gets Earth Patent Suit Tossed Accusations of patent infringement by Virginia-based Skyline Software Systems Inc ran aground when a US District Court judge issued a summary judgment in favor of Google.
Jerry Yang Gives Stanford $75 Million The gift from Stanford graduate and Yahoo co-founder Yang and his wife Akiko Yamazaki will help create an environmental studies center at the university.
IAC Earnings Clipped By Coupons Ask.com's parent company InterActiveCorp reported a big 98 percent drop in fourth quarter as they wrote down their Entertainment book coupon operation; the Search & Media Group performed well for IAC, enjoying a nice revenue gain.
Google Beats Estimates, May Have Hit Ceiling The search advertising company enjoyed another fine quarter financially, but after hours movement in the stock could indicate the fun ride for investors is gliding to a halt.
eBay Nets A Fourth Quarter Winner Net income of $346.5 million easily moved past analyst expectations for the fourth quarter of 2006, and the online marketplace also recorded 29 percent year over year revenue growth to $1.72 billion.
Yahoo Net Income Falls As Panama Lands The $269 million Yahoo realized in fourth quarter 2006 net income, for earnings of 19 cents per share, fell short of the year over year period in 2005.
Yahoo Finance Gets Personal Eager to recoup losses in their financial advertising business, Yahoo has launched a new Personal Finance site with useful services for visitors, and spots to place premium ad content.
Apple Nemesis Resigns From DOJ Prominent US Attorney Kevin Ryan abruptly resigned his position, in the middle of investigations into the stock option practices of Apple and other tech companies in Silicon Valley.
Job Hunters Pound The Job Search Pavement Visits to job boards have increased significantly as the New Year gets under way, as holiday credit card bills likely made a lot of folks start thinking they need to make some more cash in 2007.
Apple Enjoys A Perfect Moment Forget all the stock option questions and lawsuits and feds skulking in unmarked vans around Apple HQ. During the keynote address delivered by CEO Steve Jobs at the Macworld Expo, all of those worries stubbed out their cigarettes and trundled off to a corner of Silicon Valley while the Apple faithful finally got their wish for a cellphone designed by the iPod and Mac maker.
Adobe, VeriSign Dishing Out Content A content distribution network created by a new partnership between Adobe and VeriSign will deliver rich media content at a high level of quality.
Cisco Buys IronPort For Email Security Cisco is taking the malware battle to the gateway to thwart spam and spyware threats by acquiring IronPort Systems, which makes messaging security appliances.
Feds Looking At Two Ex-Apple Execs Stock-based employee compensation in the form of options was issued to Apple executives in a manner contrary to lawful practices, and Apple had to restate $84 million in earnings as a result.
Apple Cored Over Fake Documents An investigation into inappropriate option granting practices at Apple Computer has yielded evidence of falsified documents, crafted to provide maximum profits to their recipients.
Video Battle Claims Two Revver Founders In a market where YouTube represents the dominant force in sharing videos online, Revver has found a need to shake up its leadership by shaking out two of its founders.
eBay Fails In China The online marketplace proved unable to overcome fierce competition in China, where rival Taobao has held on to its role as China's leading auction site while eBay will have to settle for a minority stake in Tom Online.
The Kids Are Alright To Fox, Yahoo Online traffic to the web properties operated by News Corp's Fox Interactive Media and by Yahoo benefited from substantial traffic originating from university locations.
Holiday Online Spending Tops $17 Billion 2006 non-travel holiday spending on the Internet increased by 24 percent through November 1 to December 12 over the same 42-day period in 2005.
Yahoo, IBM Target Google Mini The entry-level search software product developed by IBM and branded by Yahoo offers enterprise search for free, while making a thinly-veiled threat toward Google's low-end appliance market.
Red Hat Yawns At Oracle, Microsoft Oracle's entry into the Linux support market and the Novell-Microsoft partnership have not fazed the Red Hat leadership.
Online Ad Spending Outrunning Offline The New Year should show a trend in spending for online advertising that will have those dollars exceed those expended on offline ads at seven times the offline pace.
Digg Paces Social Media For Two Years The wildly popular site for uploading and voting news stories up or down has come a long way from its techie-oriented roots, but the challenge to monetize those visits persists.
Yahoo Shares Down The Day After Reorg A 57-cent drop to 26.86 proved the response investors had to Yahoo's reorganization announcement twenty-four hours later.
Microsoft Touches Up Expression Tool Expression Studio represents Microsoft's entry into a graphic design market dominated by Adobe's Photoshop, where many potential users live on Apple's Mac OS platform.
Court Hammers Realtors In DOJ Case The National Association of Realtors experienced a setback in their attempts to have a case dismissed where the Department of Justice has accused the NAR of blocking Internet-based brokers from accessing MLS databases.
A Yahoo Battle And A Google War We saw a couple of unusual events today. Google shuttered a service where Yahoo was simply doing a better job drawing an audience; then it was revealed how Google would attack Yahoo's strength in brand advertising.
Microsoft Touts MSN Shopping Traffic The long Thanksgiving weekend yielded plenty of visitors to MSN Shopping, as Microsoft credited better selection and tighter integration with the new Windows Live Search.
Spam Should Elicit Stronger Response In 2007 With one email security firm claiming that nine out of ten arriving messages are spam, 2007 could be the breakout year for antispam solutions.
Dell Breaks Forecasts But Pleases Customers Preliminary results for Dell's third quarter have the company exceeding analyst results, but investigations into Dell financial practices have kept the mood from being too celebratory in Round Rock.
Google Breaks 500 Dollar Mark Shares of the search advertising company eclipsed the $500 barrier in trading, finishing the day at 509.65 and placing Google third behind Microsoft and Cisco in terms of market cap.
Universal Gambles On MySpace Infringement Case A lawsuit from Universal Music Group claims the MySpace social networking site is a "vast virtual warehouse" of copyright infringement, and want News Corp's online superstar to fork over $150,000 for each violation identified on the site.
New Media Gather Takes Old Media Cash Boston-based social media website Gather.com picked up a $10 million infusion of cash from Hearst and McGraw-Hill, both very traditional media firms, to aid its partnership and international expansion plans.
Craigslist Off The Hook Over Housing Ads The US District Court in Chicago has dismissed a lawsuit against the popular online classifieds site, where it was claimed discriminatory housing ads posted by Craigslist users were the responsibility of the website.
Europe Ready To Smack Microsoft Again Minimal progress on providing the European Commission with all the documents necessary to permit third party developers to create software that can interoperate with Windows has Microsoft on the verge of being fined heavily.
Online Retailers Seeing Holiday Traffic Boost Now Internet research firm Hitwise noted a 6.2 percent increase in traffic to websites in its US Retail 100 index, for the week ending November 11th.
Furr Pelted - Adobe CFO Resigns Executive VP and chief financial officer Randy Furr abruptly resigned from software maker Adobe, even though Adobe ruled out any issues related to his job performance or the company's financial statements.
Cisco Hits It Out Of The Park Not only did the networking company go yard with its financials, Cisco also plans to sponsor the new stadium for the Oakland Athletics, to be called Cisco Field.
Novell Gets Patent Payoff From Microsoft Much was made of the Microsoft and Novell collaboration deal being about boosting the interoperability of Windows and Linux, but make no mistake, this arrangement has been all about the patents.
Verizon Ready To YouTube Its Customers A potential deal between telco firm Verizon and the Google-owned video sharing site YouTube could bring user-contributed video zaniness to people carrying advanced Verizon mobiles as well as delivering them to on-demand TV customers.
Google Sees Papers As Next Step For Ads Google wants to give an advertiser the option to have ads appear online, on radio, in video, probably on TV soon, and in newsprint. Should they succeed, Google will be a one-stop shop for marketers everywhere.
Google, Ask Rise In Market Everyone knows about Google's high-flying stock price and equally dominant search share, but Ask parent IAC/Interactive has been upwardly mobile as well.
Pronto Ventures Into Comparison Shopping IAC/Interactive has stepped up its promotion of the Pronto.com comparison shopping engine by launching a Merchant Solutions Center.
Oracle Pushes Against Red Hat Support Larry Ellison announced his company would offer Linux support at a cheaper price than Red Hat does. It could be a ploy to make Red Hat an easier takeover target.
YouTube Obeys The Law When faced with a legal request for information about a filmmaker who uploaded an amateur 12-minute video based on a leaked script for the Paramount film "Twin Towers," YouTube handed over the data.
IBM To Amazon - Pay Up Five patents held by IBM have been central to discussions between the company and online retailer Amazon.com, but reticence on the part of Amazon to pay a licensing fee to IBM has led the two parties to court.
Google Propelled By Quality In Q3 2006 Revenue and earnings leaped for Google in its financial third quarter as the company continued to reap billions from its online advertising business.
Never Argue With The Data The Search, Aggregation and Syndication sector covered by analytics firm Outsell Inc include Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft; Outsell predicts they will be part of the total information industry's growth to $458 billion annually by 2009.
Yahoo Shells Out For Two Firms Facebook is not in Yahoo's M&A plans at the moment, as they instead make deals with two companies and focus on strengthening their advertising efforts.
MTV Answers Quizilla With Purchase Viacom continued its broadening of online appeal to younger Internet users as its MTV Networks division picked up Quizilla, a top-five destination for female teens.
McAfee Replaces Top Two Execs The antivirus software maker fired president Kevin Weiss while CEO George Samenuk stepped down from the post he had held since January 2001.
Google Picks Up YouTube The video sharing site YouTube finished a busy day of deals with content providers with the announcement that it, too, had closed a big deal in being acquired by Google for $1.65 billion.
Watchers Await Google, Yahoo Deals Billion dollar acquisitions rumored to be percolating at Yahoo and Google have not yet delivered on their promised fruition.
Jobs Apologizes But Apple Probes Continue An internal investigation at Apple revealed backdating of stock grants happened between 1997 and 2002, and CEO Steve Jobs knew of but did not benefit from those options.
Dunn, Others Charged Over HP Spying Ex-chairman Patricia Dunn and four other people face indictments in California due to their roles in a spying scandal that affected board members and journalists.
Holiday Marketers Should Enjoy Big Numbers DoubleClick's Performics division expects 53 percent growth for online sales in the fourth quarter of 2006, and budgeting and marketing costs for Internet retailers should increase as well.
The Economist - Yahoo Stuck In Second In an industry where an overnight sensation can change one aspect of the online world, and just as quickly be surpassed by the next great thing, Yahoo and its CEO, Terry Semel, have been called out for running to stand still.
PayPal Settles Over Protection Programs The payment processing division of eBay will pay $5.2 million to settle investigations by 28 states into PayPal's customer protection programs.
AMD Knocked Back In Intel Suit A federal judge has ruled that AMD's antitrust lawsuit must be pursued outside the United States, as some arguments made by AMD against Intel only pertain to Intel's activities internationally.
Gartner Says Yahoo Is OK Weakness in the financial and automotive advertising markets led Yahoo to announce it will hit the lower end of its third quarter forecast.
Dell Announces Hiring Plan Amidst Probe The computer manufacturer scored some public relations points by announcing it will add 500 engineering jobs to its Central Texas product development group.
H-P CEO May Testify Before Congress The broadening scandal enveloping the board at H-P has also snared the company's CEO, Mark Hurd, and he may travel to Washington DC to discuss the situation.
Yahoo, Hype, And A Billion For Facebook College and high school networking site Facebook has been rumored to be in acquisition talks with a handful of companies, with the latest rumor calling for Yahoo to plunk down $1 billion for the company.
Yahoo Falls On Weak 3Q Forecast The company's chief financial officer told attendees at a Goldman Sachs conference that sales for automotive and financial advertising has fallen, and that will impact Yahoo's third quarter numbers.
Warner Music, YouTube Partner On Videos The agreement between the popular video sharing site YouTube and major music label Warner will be hailed as a victory for consumer-generated content proponents.
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