Top Items:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Microsoft's Yahoo Offer: $8 Billion Stock Buyback; $1 Billion for Search — Oh, they're plenty irked in Redmond today, in the wake of Yahoo's (YHOO) picking of the Google (GOOG) ad-outsourcing deal over a proposal by Microsoft (MSFT). — And what exactly was that offer?
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Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Microsoft's Not Bluffing — Look, it might be the biggest poker bluff in history and analysts are once again chattering that Yahoo's ad outsourcing deal with Google might force Microsoft back to make another offer for the Internet portal. — Sorry to be the skunk at Carl Icahn's garden party, but BoomTown doesn't think so.
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Why Yahoo Passed On Microsoft's Search Deal (New Details!) — As of last weekend, Yahoo (YHOO) had two deals on the table: A Microsoft (MSFT) search deal and a Google (GOOG) search deal. Yahoo chose the Google deal. After speaking with a person familiar with Microsoft's thinking …
Brier Dudley / Brier Dudley's blog:
Microsoft president reveals Yahoo offer, bangs antitrust war drum — The latest scoop on the Microsoft offer that Yahoo rejected comes from a source familiar with Microsoft's position — Kevin Johnson, president of the platforms and services division. — In a memo sent today to employees …
Peter Whoriskey / Washington Post:
Google-Yahoo Deal Raises Antitrust Fears — Google, already the world's dominant Web company, keeps on growing. — But the announcement on Thursday that it has struck a deal to assume some of the business of its nearest competitor, Yahoo, has aroused questions about whether the company …
Discussion:
eWeek
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News.com:Analysts don't rule out a Microsoft-Yahoo deal just yet
Discussion:
Beyond Binary, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Between the Lines, eWeek, Associated Press and TechCrunch
Gina Trapani / Lifehacker:
Google Browser Sync Discontinued, No Firefox 3 Support — Reader hominid.todd says that a Google rep emailed him about the long-awaited status of the Browser Sync extension for Firefox 3. Turns out they're discontinuing development on it. Here's Google's response to hominid.todd's inquiry:
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Om Malik / GigaOM:
Social Networking Gets a Sanity Check — After years of hype, noise and funding, the social networking sector is finally getting a harsh, but necessary, sanity check. — Today there are numbers out from comScore that indicate plateauing growth for the big two — MySpace and Facebook …
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Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Technorati Raises $7.5 Million, Crashes — Technorati, the once-promising, but has-been blog search engine, has raised $7.5 million of a $10 million Series D round, PE Hub reports, citing a regulatory filing. Returning to invest more: Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mobius Venture Capital, and FG Incubation, which runs Technorati Japan.
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Joseph Weisenthal / paidContent.org:
More Cash For Technorati: Blog Searcher Gets $7.5 Million Of $10 Million Fourth Round — Looks like the Technorati Monster has escaped again, gobbling up more cash... The perpetually “borked” blog search engine has raised another $7.5 million of a planned $10 million fourth round, reports peHUB, citing a regulatory filing.
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
AP Goes After Bloggers For Posting Article Headlines And Snippets — from the you're-going-to-lose,-badly dept — Last fall, the Associated Press claimed that it was ready to change to face the new internet world — and that meant not just being a gatekeeper, but joining in the conversation.
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Pthurrott / SuperSite Blog:
Bob Cringely is off his gourd — The Robert X. Cringely stuff was cute once, but it's hit “Fake Steve Jobs” territory now: We know who you are, and it's just not fun or funny anymore. More to the point, The X-Man's latest is just plain crazy talk: … It's worth noting, incidentally, that even the title of this post is horrible.
Jonathan Richards / Times of London:
Google: we don't know how to make money from YouTube — ‘A whole new industry’ could be created around video advertising on the web, Google said, but it's not sure how — Google has said that it is still unsure how to make money from YouTube, the enormously popular video-sharing website it owns, but hopes to be able to do so soon.
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Don Reisinger / The Digital Home:If it can't find a solution, Google should kill YouTube
Discussion:
TG Daily
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Interview with Microsoft's Robbie Bach, part 2, on Xbox 360 — The biggest business in Robbie Bach's Entertainment & Devices Group at Microsoft is the Xbox 360 video game business. After many years of losses, the game business is poised to turn a profit, as is the E&D group itself, for the fiscal year ending June 30.
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Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
Fake Steve Jobs Gets Real New Job: Leaving Forbes For Newsweek — Forbes editor Dan Lyons, best known to most of you as Fake Steve Jobs, is leaving his employer after a 10-year run and jumping to Newsweek, where he'll take tech columnist Steve Levy's old slot.
Matt Richtel / New York Times:
Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast — SAN FRANCISCO — The onslaught of cellphone calls and e-mail and instant messages is fracturing attention spans and hurting productivity. It is a common complaint. But now the very companies that helped create the flood are trying to mop it up.
Nik Cubrilovic / TechCrunch:
Get Ready For A New Platform War. Google Gears Drives Straight At Microsoft's Profits. — Google launched Gears last May, and for the first year of its release it was considered a minor, niche product that a few developers and users may take advantage of to allow offline access to web applications.
