Finally Yahoo decided to cave in and has decided to partner with Google to display relevant alongside its search results in the US and Canada. This surely is the beginning of the end of the ambitious Panama project.

If you remember Yahoo had announced a similar deal a couple of months back that was more of a test to see the returns from the ads by Google. From what I’ve heard, Yahoo was extremely satisfied with the returns and that’s why this deal is happening today.

Yahoo has spent a lot on Panama, the advertising platform that was built to compete with Google Adwords. But somehow Google managed to stay on, and Yahoo has seen less ad dollars compared to Google on its search advertising front.

You can read the Google blog post about the deal, but here is the main gist of the deal.

• The deal is non-exclusive. Yahoo will be able to run Google ads alongside Yahoo ads or other ad providers.
• The deal is expected to add $800 million a year in revenues and $250 million to $450 million in operating cash flow.
• The deal only applies to paid search and contextual ads, not to algorithmic search.

On a related note, Yahoo also has concluded all talks with Microsoft and decided to focus on its core business. I have no idea who’s going to benefit in this race of Internet domination that Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are vying for.

At the end of the day its Google who is playing the smart moves. Simply put this deal will start the decay of Yahoo Search, and who knows one day they might even outsource search to Google. Who wins? Google obviously.

As someone said, this deal is more like Ford signing a deal to have its cars built by Honda. By any means its an admission of failure, a failure by Yahoo to monetize its assets effectively and a complete failure in the search game.

I now wonder what does Microsoft get by buying a sinking Yahoo? Simply put Microsoft is a sinking ship too, and two sinking ships don’t make a cruise that is Google.

I have virtually have no interest in this deal, since this is the beginning of another round of internet domination by Google. But even otherwise I’d never want Yahoo to go into Microsoft’s hands. The big three are BIG only when they are left on their own, not when Yahoo becomes a mouse to Google or Microsoft.

On a slightly retarded note, I love the press release headline of Yahoo. “Yahoo! to Strengthen Competitive Position in Online Advertising Through Non-Exclusive Agreement With Google”

Really? Yahoo

Google’s press release is a better read though. Sound off your opinions of the deal in the comments.

Finally it looks like Steve Ballmer and his team found too much of trouble running behind Yahoo for the past three months. Microsoft considers Yahoo to be its golden goose, and it feels that it will lay golden eggs in the future of online advertising.. I had written a post detailing What A Combined Microsoft Yahoo Looks Like weighing all the pros and cons if this deal went through. Somehow Yahoo managed to push Microsoft to such an extent that it had no choice but to accept defeat.

Now that Yahoo is staying on as an independent company, Jerry Yang and his team have some important tasks at hand. Let me reserve what exactly do they need to do for another post and focus on the ramifications of the breakout of this deal.

Microsoft issued a statement here

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” said Ballmer.

Yahoo! responded by issuing a statement

“From the beginning of this process, our independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief that Microsoft’s offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view. Yahoo! is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market. Our solid results for the first quarter of 2008 and increased full year 2008 operating cash flow outlook reflect the progress the company is making.”

Looking at the two statements, it is clearly evident that Microsoft sounds like a looser while Yahoo sounds like a clear winner either way you look at it. Considering that Yahoo already has a search advertising deal with Google, Yahoo should now focus on improving the services and increase the ad revenue across the board.

With the Microsoft hurdle out of the way, I feel that there are more important Google and Yahoo tie ups on the way. This is just the beginning and from now on, Google has got some interesting times ahead, and it will be worth watching how Google dodges the challenges being thrown at it.

Look out for a post soon, wherein I’ll be detailing as to what Yahoo needs to exactly do to stay clear and profitable in the future. I’m no guru but I love Yahoo and would never want it to go into the evil hands of Microsoft.

What do you think about the fall through of this deal? What do you think is going to happen to Microsoft, Yahoo and Google as individuals? How do you think the Internet will react to this? Pitch in your opinion by dropping a comment.

I never wanted to this deal to go through and it looks its finally happening. Yay! I can’t be more happy for Yahoo than am right now .

photo credit: RossinaBossioB

Music sharing has been of the most common file sharing activities on the internet. There are many ways you could find the music you were looking for by using tools like Limewire, BitTorrent etc.. But most times nothing beats a Google search does it? Yes you heard that right.. Google may as well be your best friend if you are looking to find music freely on the Internet.

Just follow the instructions below, and you will be on your way to find the music that you otherwise won’t find on P2P networks. The hack simply involves the major search engines revealing their vast indexes to you so that you can find what you are looking for.

I’m going to give some modified special search strings that will help you find hidden stuff from Google, Yahoo and MSN.

How to Accomplish the Hack

Click on the links below for your favorite search engine. Modify the details according to your liking (for example replace Linkin Park with Radiohead or just the song name). Change the “wma/mp3″ tag to other format such as “ogg” if you wish to download the music in other not so popular formats.

• Google

“parent directory” mp3 OR wma OR ogg OR wav Linkin Park -html -htm -download -links

• Yahoo Search

“parent directory” AND (Linkin AND Park) AND (mp3 OR wma OR ogg) AND NOT(”download”) AND NOT(”links”)

• MSN Search

“parent directory” AND (Linkin AND Park) AND (mp3 OR wma OR ogg) AND NOT(”download”) AND NOT(”links”)

Using the major search engines should help you find any kind of music you are looking for, but there other alternative music only search engines also available that deserve a mention. Check out Alltheweb Audio (mp3), mp3realm and espew

So that was it. I hope this guide will help you find the music you have been looking for quite some time now.. Have a musical day ahead. Do drop in a comment with the song/artist/band that you found with this hack!

Special Credit to Blog Anything

Hot on the heels of the 3days ultimatum given to Yahoo by Microsoft, Yahoo is doing everything it can to subvert the deal. Yesterday it acquired analytics startup Indextools and today it has announced a search advertising deal with Google.

Here’s the press release :

Yahoo! Inc. , a leading global Internet company, announced today that it will begin a limited test of Google Inc.’s AdSense for Search service, which will deliver relevant Google ads alongside Yahoo!’s own search results. The test will apply only to traffic from yahoo.com in the U.S. and will not include Yahoo!’s extended network of affiliate or premium publisher partners. The test is expected to last up to two weeks and will be limited to no more than 3% of Yahoo! search queries.

Looks like Yahoo has finally given up on Panama. A report from last year shows Google’s RPS (Revenue Per Search) at $25, versus $16 for Yahoo. So if the RPS has remained more or less the same for the past year, this deal could mean more cash in Yahoo’s registers. Google’s earning atleast 30% more than Yahoo, and considering that Yahoo’s major source of income is from advertising, this deal could help the company deliver a better than expected Q2 earnings call.

Microsoft’s reaction to this deal was on the expected lines, saying that it would give Yahoo+Google an unprecedented market share of nearly 90% in online advertising, which it thinks isn’t good for the internet.

Eventhough Yahoo has mentioned that this is a test run and will last for only two weeks, at the moment it looks like Yahoo is looking for a long term relationship with Google rather than being acquired by Microsoft.

The evil side of me thinks that, Google will give higher quality ads than usual so that it could win the confidence of Yahoo, and in turn stop the Yahoo – Microsoft merger from happening.

What do you reckon will be the implications of this deal in the trilogy of Google-Yahoo-Microsoft?

The Wall Street Journal believes that Yahoo! will decline the $44.6 Billion Offer made by Microsoft to acquire it tomorrow. Should this happen tomorrow, it might set some wildfires tomorrow, as this would probably be considered as a bold move by Yahoo.

Yahoo has said that it will not consider any offer made by Microsoft under 40$ a share. Over a series of meetings, the Yahoo board believes that this offer seriously undermines the true value of Yahoo. If at all Yahoo pushes for atleast 40$ a share, this would mean another 30% premium for Microsoft, taking the potential bid to about 60$ billion.

The timing of Microsoft’s Offer made one thing very clear and that was that it is trying to buy Yahoo for cheap. Looks like the Yahoo Board have decided to put up a bold face, and have decided to raise the bid price beyond the 40$ mark. Also the original Microsoft offer on February 1st has itself lost value, as the bid was half cash and half stock, and Microsoft’s Stock price has fallen nearly 13% in this period.

I’m not very sure of what the Yahoo Board intends to do, but it does seem like, they want to be purchased by Microsoft after all. They are just trying to make a little bit more money on this deal. This also shows, just about how week Yahoo has become over the years. If they really wanted to say no, they would have said a firm No!

While the true reaction of the Yahoo’s board will be known tomorrow, but at the moment the ball is in Microsoft’s court. They have two options, one is to raise the offer price, or else go for a hostile takeover. Either ways it looks like Yahoo might end up being the cat in Microsoft’s Lion kingdom. But I’d like to see Yahoo fight back and fend off this acquisition, and take a new approach to their business and make themselves competitive again.

Michael Arrington from Techcrunch has an interesting analysis on this deal.

Amidst all the media frenzy on the Yahoo acquisition, and the protesting Flickr Users opposing the Micr0s0ft takeover, we have yet another rumor from Dan Faber at ZDNet who believes that Flickr would be debuting its video service in the coming months. This isn’t all that surprising, its been there forever in the rumor mills but its timing has something interesting, considering the impending hostile bid from Microsoft.

As I’ve already mentioned before this deal isn’t a good idea for the Web2.0 culture, that Yahoo has given us for the past few years in the form of Del.icio.us and Flickr. Now with this deal looming overhead, Yahoo would do better to launch Flickr Video. Stuart Butterfield (Flickr co-founder) had told TechCrunch last May that Flickr Video would be coming “soon”. This was reaffirmed by Bloomberg in August. But its already February now and we haven’t seen it yet.

What plans Yahoo exactly has for Flickr is unknown, but whatever the plans are, I don’t want to see yet another Youtube clone. I guess Yahoo does what Flickr does best, that is personal stuff and scenery. Maybe Flickr Video could have videos that we would shoot during holidays with our families and friends and stuff like that. Going behind Youtube would be a big mistake IMHO.

I am just keeping my fingers crossed on this one. It depends what the board wants to do with this, should they launch it now, or launch after the prevailing storm? Whatever it is I don’t want Microsoft to mess things up with Flickr, and the picture above conveys it all. And as Fake Steve Ballmer said at the ZDNet blog WMV only!.

[photo: flickr/lopbot]

]]> http://dailyapps.net/2008/02/stealth-mode-yahoo-working-on-flickr-video/feed/ 1 http://dailyapps.net/2008/02/sign-a-petition-against-the-yahoo-acquisition/ http://dailyapps.net/2008/02/sign-a-petition-against-the-yahoo-acquisition/#comments Sat, 02 Feb 2008 10:06:04 +0000 Karthik Kastury http://dailyapps.net/2008/02/sign-a-petition-against-the-yahoo-acquisition/ Read The Rest →]]>

If you think that the proposed Microsoft and Yahoo Merger isn’t all that good for the Internet Community as a whole. If you think Yahoo would rather live than die at the hands of Microsoft please sign the petition.

I’ve already outlined just about all the reasons why this acquisition isn’t a good idea in my previous post What Does A Combined Microsoft Yahoo Look Like. Please read it and consider signing the petition. The power is in the hands of us bloggers who could get the attention of mainstream media, and make the regulators rethink, and try and stop this deal from going through.

Forget all the crap that Steve Ballmer said in his press release, incase Microsoft does go ahead with the deal, it gets nothing out of it. There is no way it can defeat Google by acquiring Yahoo, and it means that we see the end of Yahoo, one of most longstanding Internet companies out there.

Please sign the petition over here

Hot on the heels of the $44.6 Billion Offer made by Microsoft to Buy Yahoo, the web is going crazy with discussions on this. This deal if takes place, could well be the defining moment of Internet in 2008. This deal has large ramifications, beyond just about you and me can think of.

I’m not entirely sure, if this deal makes sense for Microsoft. The only reason Microsoft seems to be running behind Yahoo is to beat Google in Search and Online Advertising. The Bid seems to be a good deal for Yahoo, since the company has virtually been struggling for the past four years and 62% premium on the current value seems to be a good deal for the shareholders.

But it raises some obvious questions. Every Acquisition has always had one side loosing itself. Take for example Google’s recent acquisitions. Dodgeball, Jaiku, Measure Map etc.. All these companies had to suffer the wrath of Google. But take Youtube, it was a competitor to Google Video at the time it was purchased, and Google had to take some tough decisions on what it should do with Google Video. Now we see Youtube and Google Video coexisting happily without interfering with each other.

The Question is can Microsoft do this. For long we’ve known Microsoft to be a monopolistic company, with bigger than life interests. Let me ask you some questions here. I’d want all of you to comment on these questions that I’m putting up here..

• Windows Live search or Yahoo search?
• Live messenger or Yahoo messenger?
• Live spaces , Yahoo 360?
• MSN Dating (Match) or Yahoo personal?
• MSN advertising platform or Yahoo advertising platform?
• .NET or JAVA?
• Live ID or Open ID?

Microsoft surely has some tough questions to answer, and speaking with reference to history, I think Microsoft would personally like to stick with its own services. This acquisition also raises questions as to what Microsoft plans to do with the poster childs of Web 2.0 namely Flickr and Del.icio.us. It would do more harm than good to play around with them.

There is also one more thing that the Yahoo Board would have to consider incase they decide to go ahead with this deal. A lot more people could be loosing their jobs at Yahoo, considering the amount of overlap in the services that the two internet giants offer and with the parent company that is Microsoft giving preference to its own properties over Yahoo’s inspite of Yahoo Services being more popular.

In my belief the deal is not a good idea for the whole Internet as well. Microsoft has for long shed away from promoting Open Source and we all know that Open Source is the future of the Internet and proprietary technologies like ASP will never work. And what’s even more important is that Yahoo has been ramping up on the use of Open Source Technologies with services like Flickr, Zimbra, Del.icio.us. So that’s again a point of differing interests of the two companies.

I don’t think a combination of Yahoo and Microsoft is going to reverse Google’s increasing search dominance. As Terry Semel said in 2006:

My impartial advice to Microsoft is that you have no chance. The search business has been formed.

He’s pretty much right, the search game is pretty much sealed, and Microsoft doesn’t have much of a chance here. Acquiring Yahoo would mean a lot of conflicts for Microsoft and its own services and its own technologies.

All in all I don’ think this deal holds value for either Yahoo and Microsoft, except this is probably the answer to all the struggles Yahoo has put up with its Finances and Stock. Yahoo gets a boatload of money if this deal gets through and looses its identity that it has built up over the years. And What does Microsoft get, nothing at all. There is no way Microsoft can defeat Google by acquiring Yahoo simply because conflicts in the interests of the two companies is one too many.

What do you think about this deal? Yahoo still hasn’t said a Yes or No to the deal and their board must be taking some decisions as I speak. But all in all if this deal goes through, Yahoo would be the biggest looser and Google would only become stronger.

Please Yahoo, please say No. I don’t want any of the services that have come to define the Internet to die at the hands of Oppressive Microsoft. Please live on, and Live Free and I’m sure you’d be able to get past all your recent troubles.

Please voice your opinions on this deal in the comments. We all need to discuss this, as it could forever change the landscape of the Internet.

Image Credit : Mashable

If you are aware every year Yahoo releases a Top 10 list of searches for that particular year, and last year Britney Spears topped the list. This time around Yahoo decided to something different.. Read on to find out more..

This time around, Yahoo has presented the trends in a different fashion, by grouping the Top Trends for 2007 in different categories. The topics include not only top news stories (led by Saddam Hussein) and tech trends (no surprise over here, YouTube), but also trends in fields like environment, pet food, kids’ search trends, and searches on Yahoo’s Delicious bookmark sharing site.

In the tech category, behind YouTube, was: Wikipedia; Facebook; an Apple with super hits iTunes, iPod, and iPhone; the massively popular game console Wii; Microsoft’s Xbox 360; Sony PlayStation 3; and Guitar Hero, the simulated rock-guitar computer game that has become a sensation right now world over.

The company got its sense of humor into action by creating a “Celebrity Downslides” category, topped by none other than Britney Spears, who seems to be  busy between shuffling here life between shops, courthouses, and rehab these days.

Have a read  on more the Yahoo Top Trends for 2007

Flickr has handpicked over 10,000 places worldwide to showcase photos that were shot over there. Flickr will also provide other information like Maps, Weather and Time at that particular location. Say you want to see all photos that were shot in Bangalore, all you need to do is visit the Bangalore Places page to see all the photos that were shot in Bangalore.

Here are a few screenshots that show Places in action :

I believe that Flickr Places will use the Geotagging feature that’s already built into Flickr for the implementation of Places. This does sound like a real cool feature from Flickr, and I am surely going to go for a World tour once it becomes live. 

What do you guys think about this cool new feature from Flickr? I am surely in love with it..

Via Tech Buzz