Yahoo! Launches Fire Eagle

New Platform Enables Users to Easily Update and Manage Their Location Information Across the Web

Yahoo! Inc. today announced the general availability of Fire Eagle (http://fireeagle.yahoo.net), an open platform that helps users take their location to the Web while giving them the ability to easily control how and where their location data is shared.

Fire Eagle gives users a place to store and manage information about their location, and offers developers clear protocols for updating or accessing that information. Because it’s open, any networked service can use Fire Eagle to respond to a user’s location – to help them find their friends, annotate the world or find nearby services or local information.

“Fire Eagle is about making everything on the Internet more useful, fun or interesting by adding the element of location,” said Tom Coates, head of product at Yahoo! Brickhouse. “We’re here to help people take their location to the Web by giving them the ability to control how much detail about their location they want to share and which applications they want to share it with.”

Yahoo! Announces Ad-Supported Online Gaming

#1 Online Games Site Launches Internet’s Largest Collection of Ad-Supported, Downloadable Games

Partners With Double Fusion and NeoEdge for Technology and Advertising

Yahoo! today announced that Yahoo! Games will offer ad-supported downloadable games from the top casual games publishers. With more than 400 ad-supported games available to users by the end of the year, Yahoo! Games solidifies its commitment to providing the Internet’s best gaming experience, and is creating new opportunities for advertisers to reach an engaged audience. The announcement brings the industry’s largest collection of ad-supported games to the biggest gaming audience on the web and reinforces Yahoo! Games’ overall strategy to be the most comprehensive distribution point for games online.

In-game advertising allows Yahoo! Games and its publisher partners to better monetize its games offering, provide advertisers access to a coveted demographic of gamers and satisfy user demand for casual ad-supported games. Top technology providers, Double Fusion and NeoEdge, will sell and integrate pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll video ads into the Yahoo! Games catalog. Paid downloads without advertising will also be available to users on Yahoo! Games.

“In game advertising is a win-win for Yahoo! Games, our partners and our users,” said Kyle Laughlin, head of games, Yahoo!. “Yahoo! Games will safely and simply monetize our games experience while providing the best and most popular games free to game enthusiasts.”

GrindTV Action Sports Content Now Available on Yahoo!

Agreement Brings Action Sports Channel to the Internet’s #1 Sports Site

GrindTV, the leading online action sports destination, announced an agreement with Yahoo! Sports, the Internet’s leading sports destination, in which GrindTV.com will become a co-branded channel on Yahoo! Sports. The site features videos, photos, and editorial content across the most popular action sports categories, including Skateboarding, Surfing, Snowboarding and Motocross. The new channel will be featured as a primary sports category on Yahoo! Sports, and features will be editorially programmed on the Yahoo! Sports homepage at http://www.sports.yahoo.com. The partnership brings Yahoo! an immediate presence in the action sports category, and will bring 1 million additional users to Yahoo! Sports each month.

“Our partnership with Yahoo! Sports will allow us to more effectively serve the growing action sports community, including enthusiasts, filmmakers, athletes and manufacturers,” said Erik Hawkins, CEO of GrindTV.com. “Working with the number one sports site on the web will help us to take action sports to the next level, and introduce this lifestyle, and these exceptional athletes, to a broader audience.”

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Time To Make The Donuts!

Dunkin' Donuts and Yahoo! Partner to Help Busy People Start Their Day With the News They Need

Companies Unveil New 'Yahoo! Sports Minute,' 'Good Morning Yahoo!' and 'Dunkin' Donuts Lovers Lounge'

Dunkin' Donuts, the world's largest coffee and baked goods chain, today announced a partnership with Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), a leading global Internet company, which will allow millions of busy people to get the news they need to get them running throughout the day. Through this partnership, Yahoo! will create two new Dunkin' Donuts-branded video programs, as well as a Dunkin' Donuts community web site. The first program from this partnership is the "Yahoo! Sports Minute," a daily video summary of the biggest sports stories, and is now available to users. "Good Morning Yahoo!," a unique morning video news program, and the "Dunkin' Lounge" social community will launch later this spring. The agreement represents the first time Yahoo! has worked with an advertising partner to develop original content initiatives in multiple categories.

Microsoft Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo! for $31 per Share

Transaction valued at approximately $44.6 billion in cash and stock; Provides 62 percent premium to current trading price for Yahoo! shareholders; Combined entity to create a more competitive company while providing superior value to shareholders and better choice and innovation for customers and partners

Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo! Inc. Board of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion. Microsoft's proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan.31, 2008.

"We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market," said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. "We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners."

YouTube Continues to Lead U.S. Online Video Market With 28 Percent Market Share, According to comScore Video Metrix

Nearly 2 in 5 U.S. Internet Users Watched a YouTube Video in September

comScore a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its comScore Video
Metrix report for September 2007, revealing that nearly 75 percent of U.S.
Internet users watched a video online (including both streaming video and
progressive downloads), averaging three hours of video per person during
the month. Google Sites, which includes YouTube.com, topped the September
rankings with both the most unique video viewers and most videos viewed.

Google Continues to Lead Online Video Market

September saw Americans view more than 9 billion videos online, with
Google Sites once again ranking as the top U.S. video property with 2.6
billion videos viewed (28.3 percent share of videos), 2.5 billion of which
occurred at YouTube.com (27.6 percent). Fox Interactive Media ranked second
with 387 million (4.2 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 381 million
(4.1 percent) and Viacom Digital with 304 million (3.3 percent).

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Yahoo! settles with Chinese journalists

Internet giant Yahoo! has settled with attorneys working on the behalf of several jailed Chinese journalists.

It was alleged that Yahoo! gave the Chinese government information that led to the arrest and imprisonment of journalists Shi Tao, Yu Ling and Wang Xiaoning. Following the settlement the lawsuit was withdrawn from the federal court for the Northern District of California. The court filing said: "Plaintiffs and defendants hereby jointly stipulate to dismissal with prejudice of all claims made in this action, based on a private settlement understanding among the parties."

Recently during a congressional hearing the chief executive of Yahoo!, Jerry Yang, was severely criticized by the California Democrat Representative Tom Lantos over the matter. Yang was made to publicly apologise to the family of Shi Tao, who were present at the hearing. Shi Tao has been sentenced to a decade in prison after email information about the Chinese government's efforts to stifle recognition of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. For information on digital products and services visit www.broadbandnational.com

Yahoo! set to acquire Zimbra

The internet giant Yahoo! is to purchase the email company Zimbra, it has been announced.

Yahoo! will pay $350 million in cash for the company, a move which is part of efforts to open new sources of revenue and continue competing with rivals Microsoft and Google. Zimbra sells hosting services and email software to major businesses, internet providers and other organizations.

Jerry Yang, Yahoo!'s cofounder and chief executive said: "Zimbra's tremendous talent and innovative technology will help to extend our core mail offerings, further strengthening our strong leadership position in this space." Only two weeks ago Yahoo! purchased the internet advertising company BlueLithium for $300 million. The company is currently in a race with Microsoft and Google to acquire as much of the highly lucrative internet advertising industry as possible.

Currently regulators are examining Google's purchase of the internet ad company DoubleClick earlier this year for $3.1 billion.

Yahoo Acquires BlueLithium

Yahoo has acquired the ad company BlueLithium for $300 million in cash, it has been announced.

The move is the latest in a scramble between the internet goliaths for control of the lucrative online advertising market. BlueLithium, which is based in San Jose, is capable of reaching 66 percent of Internet users, making it the fifth largest ad network in the US.

Todd Teresi, senior vice president of Yahoo Publisher Network, said: "Yahoo has been very strong on the branding side of the business, but has struggled in recent months on the direct marketing side. "This absolutely is right in line with our strategy to get that business back on track and accelerate our growth." In April Google came to an agreement with the ad company DoubleClick to acquire it for $3.1 billion in cash. However, the acquisition has been delayed to allow US regulators to examine the deal, as it may break antitrust laws.


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Yahoo! launches new online marketing tool

Yahoo! has announced the launch of a new customized advertising product that tailors promotions to the web users' characteristics.

SmartAds enables marketers to target Internet users by taking their age, gender, location and online use into account, CNET News reports.

Yahoo! spokesperson Guade Paez described the new service, which also boasts an advertisement creation tool, as "behavioral targeting".

"This makes display advertising more of a direct response vehicle than just branding," she commented.

According to the news provider, the new advertisements are expected to first appear on Yahoo!'s publisher sites before being rolled out across its other partner web sites.

Last month, Yahoo! combined its US-based search and display advertising sales teams as part of its continuing effort to meet the requirements of its marketing customers.

Sue Decker, president of the firm, said that by joining the two services, Yahoo! could "better serve" its advertisers and build upon its position in the market.

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Search Results Can Be Risky

The results of Internet searches are exposing users to malware, according to a recent report from the software security company McAfee.

At least four percent of all search results could lead users to websites that could download malware, the study found. However, the study also found that the number of such results with malware fell one percent on last year's results.

Most likely to contain websites with malware are the sponsored search results purchased by their owners which appear at the top of a page. The author of the study, Ben Edelman, told vnunet.com: "The search engines could do more. "These advertisers rely completely on search engines, so the search engines are uniquely positioned to kill these businesses."

In the study, Mr. Edelman analyzed the initial 50 results from 2,300 of the most popular keywords on Yahoo! Google, AOL, MSN and Ask.com. Meanwhile, levels of malware have climbed over the last year at a greater rate than in the years before, a recent report has found. In their most recent report, IBM's Internet security systems researchers detected over 7,200 weaknesses, most of which could be exploited by attackers.

Spyware programs are sometimes installed as Trojan horses of one sort or another. They differ in that their creators present themselves openly as businesses, for instance by selling advertising space on the pop-ups created by the malware, states Mark Weibel EVP of Marketing for Broadband National Inc. who operates the industries leading comparative shopping website for digital products and services. “Most such programs present the user with an end-user license agreement which purportedly protects the creator from prosecution under computer contaminant laws. However, spyware EULAs have not yet been upheld in court.”

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Yahoo! Eyes Social Networking Site

The internet giant Yahoo! is rumoured to be mulling over the purchase of the social networking site Bebo, the Daily Telegraph has claimed.

It is thought that Yahoo! could pay up to $1 billion for Bebo, which is about a quarter of the size of the world's most popular social networking site, MySpace. Last year, rumours were rife that Bebo turned down bids from both British Telecom and Viacom.

The founder of Bebo, Michael Birch, has stated in the past that he would rather float the company than sell it outright. This year has seen a rash of internet takeovers which has caused the stock of fast-growing internet companies to skyrocket. The latest takeover was by Microsoft, who last week paid $6 billion to take over the digital marketing company Aquantive.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! are the main players in the race to acquire these lucrative companies. In April Google won a major coup by acquiring the internet advertiser DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash.

Yahoo! Expands Online Music Library

Internet giant Yahoo! has substantially expanded its music library, the company has announced.

Now music fans will have access to a database of the lyrics to over 400,000 songs, the largest online lyrics library in the world. Songs from approximately 9,000 different artists, including the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Beyonce and Radiohead are featured in the library. While many other websites offer the lyrics to songs, most have not obtained the permission of those that own the copyright and so are technically breaking the law, Yahoo! stated.

Ian Rogers, general manager of Yahoo! Music, said of the service: "It fills a huge, gaping hole out there." Yahoo! is to share revenue generated by the ads that will be shown next to the lyric with those that own the copyrights to the songs. Meanwhile, online music site Napster has announced that it is to start offering a subscription service for access to its online library of songs. Napster has allied with electronics retail giant Circuit City to deploy the service, which will be called Circuit City + Napster.

"Music and video continue to drive the Internet," states Mark Weibel, EVP of Marketing for Broadband National Inc. who operates the industries leading comparative website. "With companies like Apple, Yahoo, Napster and Rhapsody this trend will continue to grow along side video, VoIP and IPTV"

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