Yahoo’s board met Friday to evaluate Microsoft’s takeover bid and other alternatives but did not make a formal decision on which option to pursue, people briefed on the meeting said.
Yahoo’s board did authorize the company’s management to continue meeting with Microsoft and with Time Warner, these people said, and meetings with both are expected to be scheduled for next week.
In addition to Microsoft’s proposal, the board is considering a plan to merge with the AOL unit of Time Warner, these people said. Yahoo has also been discussing a complementary plan to outsource its search advertising business, one of its principal sources of revenue, to Google, in an effort to increase revenue and try to remain independent.
The meeting followed a flurry of activity around Yahoo in recent days. It began last Saturday with a threat by Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, to begin a proxy fight to oust the board unless the companies reached a negotiated merger agreement by April 26.
On Monday, Yahoo said that it was not opposed to a deal with Microsoft but reiterated its position that the software giant’s offer undervalued Yahoo. Microsoft’s Jan. 31 offer was initially valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 a share, but after a decline in Microsoft’s shares, it has fallen to about $41.6 billion, or $28.95 a share.
Yahoo has also been discussing a combination with AOL. Under the proposed deal, whose terms remain in flux, Time Warner would merge AOL into Yahoo and provide the company with a cash infusion, according to people briefed on the talks.
The proposal would leave Time Warner with a 20 percent stake in Yahoo and would value AOL at about $10 billion, these people said. The deal would not include AOL’s rapidly declining dial-up business, these people said.
On Wednesday, Yahoo announced a limited test to outsource its search ads to Google. The test is intended to determine whether Yahoo could make more money by letting Google sell its search ads. By Yahoo’s own projections, Google earns on average 60 percent to 70 percent more for every search than Yahoo.
During the week, Microsoft also held talks with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation about possibly joining forces in a bid for Yahoo. But a person briefed on the discussions described those conversations as “conceptual,” suggesting that a joint bid was unlikely.
In Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, the conventional wisdom remains that Microsoft will eventually walk away with Yahoo.
“If you want the final chapter, Microsoft buys Yahoo,” said Bob Davis, a venture capitalist and former chief executive of the Internet portal Lycos.
Mr. Davis, a general partner at Highland Capital Partners, said outsourcing search ads would help Yahoo in the short term but devalue the company over time.
“To the extent that Yahoo outsources such a key capability to its principal competitor, it puts itself in a catch-up position for the rest of time,” he said.(*)
source: NYTimes
Yahoo's evaluate Microsoft takeover
Salesforce.com to sell Google apps
Salesforce.com Inc.'s online software service is becoming a showcase for Google Inc.'s e-mail and other widely used applications, deepening a relationship that has spurred speculation Google eventually will buy its smaller partner.
Besides selling Google's programs to its 41,000 business customers, Salesforce.com will integrate the suite of applications into its own service, which helps companies track and identify customers' needs.
The agreement to be announced Monday builds upon several years of collaboration between Salesforce.com and Google, which are trying to persuade more businesses to subscribe to software services over Internet connections instead of buying programs that must be installed on individual computers.
The online approach, sometimes called "cloud computing," represents a potential threat to bigger software makers like Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and SAP AG that make most of their money from selling individual licenses and then charging additional maintenance fees.
Salesforce.com Chief Executive Marc Benioff has become cloud computing's chief evangelist since he left Oracle to found his San Francisco-based company nine years ago. He believes his preaching will resonate even more with Google applications in Saleforce.com's platform.
"This will make it easier for us to convince more businesses to stop buying Microsoft Office and switch to better services like this that are emerging in the cloud," Benioff said.
The additional applications will help make Salesforce.com's service more attractive, but "the real winner here is Google," said Nucleus Research analyst Rebecca Wettemann. "This gives them a (business) sales channel" at no additional cost.
Salesforce.com also intends to sell customer support for Google's applications later this year. Reports that Salesforce.com wanted to plug Google's applications into its service surfaced nearly a year ago, triggering chatter about a possible acquisition.
The takeover talk then cooled after Salesforce.com disclosed that it had merely retooled its service to make it easier for its customers to distribute their ads through Google's Internet-leading search engine.
Benioff declined to comment about a possible sale to Google. Dave Girouard, who oversees Google's applications, also declined to comment about the company's interest in buying Salesforce.
Salesforce.com and Google have more in common than a passion for cloud computing.
Both companies have cultivated fun-loving cultures and set up philanthropic foundations funded by a portion of their profits.
And the stocks of both companies have soared more than fivefold since their initial public offerings in 2004. With annual sales of $749 million, Salesforce.com currently has a market value of more than $7 billion. That's well within the means of Google, which has a market value of $145 billion and $14 billion in cash. The Mountain View-based company's most expensive acquisition so far has been its recently completed $3.2 billion purchase of Internet ad service DoubleClick Inc.
Google's suite of applications includes word processing, spreadsheets, calendaring and instant messaging, as well as e-mail. All the programs are hosted over the Internet, which Google views as an advantage because users can access the applications from any computer with an online connection.
But the convenience hasn't won over most major companies, many of which worry about security issues and the ability to use the programs off-line. "There is still a big trust issue, rightly or wrongly," Wettemann said.
Google offers free basic versions of its applications and charges an annual fee of $50 per worker for a deluxe package with more options.
More than 500,000 businesses and millions of people use the programs, according to Google.
The company hasn't specified how many of the businesses pay fees for the premium applications. The programs haven't been a big moneymaker so far. Last year, Google collected less than $200 million from software licensing while raking in $16.4 billion from advertising sales. (*)
source: AP
History of www
IF you have an in-depth, honest conversation with your web designers, they will tell you that Web 2.0 is a myth. So to explain how we got to Web 16.0, here's a history of the most significant events on the www.
WEB 0.1 -- 1958 – SAGE – Radar systems are first networked
WEB 0.2 -- 1960 – Packet switching is first created
WEB 1.0 – EMAIL – "A New Way to Send Unsolicited Mail Is Born"
Although the exact history of Email is a tad murky, it is generally accepted that it appeared in 1965, and was created so that people accessing a mainframe could communicate with each other. This was the first step in the interconnection of people, facilitating almost instant communication at no cost to the user.
WEB 1.1 -- 1967 – Markup language is created
WEB 1.2 -- 1969 – ARPA – A link is established between computers
WEB 1.3 -- 1696 – ARPA Net – First packet-switched network created
WEB 2.0 – WYSIWYG – "What You See Is What You Get (sometimes)"
With the invention of WYSIWYG in 1970, users could now be presented with a basic display of what their finished product would look like, as they were working on it. This removed the need to memorize complex code.
WEB 2.1 -- 1970 – ASP – First Application Service Provider (SAAS)
WEB 2.2 -- 1970 – Style sheets are created
WEB 2.3 -- 1971 – @ is created to separate hosts and users
WEB 2.4 -- 1973 – TCP/IP is created to simplify networking
WEB 2.5 -- 1973 – First connection to another country established
WEB 2.6 -- 1974 – The term "Internet" is adopted
WEB 2.7 -- 1976 – X.25 – The first network standard is approved
WEB 2.8 -- 1978 – International packet switching service created
WEB 3.0 – USENET– "The Black Market of the Internet"
Usenet was established in 1980 to offer mail and file transfers as well as give personal users access to news. Usenet is in fact a large network of servers all in communication with each other; a user posts something to the local server and that item is passed along to the other servers. Usenet was a major turning point because users could finally have an open conversation with anyone on the net, without needing to specifically know the user (unlike Email). The downside is that with a sometimes un-policed net capable of file transfers, the Usenet of today is a haven for piracy of all types, where anything you can imagine is accessible.
WEB 3.1 -- 1979 – Email is made available to personal computer users, millions of Nigerian Princes suddenly need public help
WEB 4.0 – REAL TIME CHAT – Going Outside Deemed "Obsolete"
Real-Time Chat was created in 1980 following users' frustrations with Usenet articles sometimes taking 24 hours to be updated. This signaled a turning point: online conversations became instant, albeit isolated into segregated groups.
WEB 4.1 -- 1980 – First ISPs created providing dialup internet
WEB 4.2 -- 1981 – TCP/IP becomes a standard
WEB 4.3 -- 1981 – US/Europe/Canada/Hong-Kong/Australia connect
WEB 4.4 -- 1983 – TCP/IP becomes the only standard
WEB 4.5 -- 1983 – First wide area network using TCP/IP operational
WEB 4.6 -- 1985 – FTP – The File Transfer Protocol is created
WEB 4.7 -- 1988 – IRC – Internet Relay Chat is created
WEB 4.8 -- 1988 – Bulletin Board Systems and Forums created
WEB 5.0 – HTML/HTTP/Web Pages – "It Has Begun…"
Around 1980, many researchers were using the internet, but they had no single way to create/display "documents" (web pages). Physicist Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues needed a simple system for creating/displaying documents, but found that existing systems were too commercial, platform-specific or complicated for the average user. So they created their own relatively simple system, consisting of browsing software called "WorldWideWeb," a protocol for transmitting the information (HTTP) and a document annotation convention called "Hyper Text Markup Language" (HTML). This meant anyone could now create web pages using their simple language.
WEB 5.1 -- 1989 – Images can now be animated, oh the horror!
WEB 5.2 -- 1990 – The network now covers the entire world (publicly)
WEB 6.0 – Search – "Did You Mean: Google?"
Before 1990, there was no way to find a page; you had to know the specific location. Around 1991, search engines began indexing (storing) the content they found, giving users the ability to search for a page even if they didn't know the page's location.
WEB 6.1 -- 1991 – DNS – Dynamic Naming System is created
WEB 6.2 -- 1991 – The first text-based browser is created
WEB 7.0 – DHTML – "Because Non-Scrolling Text Is Boring"
The web was static until Dynamic HTML (DHTML) was created. DHTML introduced client-side scripting, allowing authors to include code in their web pages that performed an action upon being downloaded onto a user's computer. DHTML introduced rollover buttons and drop-down menus on web pages. It goes a long way to making the web more personalized.
WEB 7.1 -- 1993 – The first graphics based browsers are created
WEB 7.2 -- 1993 – Screen casts are first created
WEB 7.3 -- 1994 – Wikis are created; Britannica begins holding its breath
WEB 7.4 -- 1994 – The World Wide Web Consortium is formed
WEB 7.5 -- 1994 – CSS – Cascading Style Sheets created
WEB 8.0 – ONLINE DIARIES – "Teens Reportedly Misunderstood"
Online diaries were first created in 1994 as a means for people to store their diaries online for personal or public reading. Writers could now reach almost anyone worldwide at practically no cost, and everyone could create editorials on whatever subjects they liked, without fear of censorship.
WEB 8.1 -- 1996 – The first social bookmarking site created
WEB 9.0 – RANKED RESULTS – "The Online Popularity Contest"
Search engine results helped find things, but many of the results were useless or had nothing to do with the keywords used. As of 1996, search results started to be ranked based on a multitude of things, like how popular a page is. This made searching faster and easier, and significantly less painful.
WEB 9.1 -- 1996 – Flash is created, whole websites can now be animated
WEB 9.2 -- 1997 – The term "Blog" is adopted
WEB 10.0 – HIRED BLOGGERS – "Wow Isn't Product X Great!"
As of 1997, personal diaries began to evolve to what became known as "blogs." Many corporate websites and personal homepages had (and still do have) news sections, these were traditionally updated manually in a back-end system. With the advent of blogs, the commercial sector jumped in, seeing a new marketing medium.
WEB 10.1 -- 1998 – The first audio news site is created
WEB 10.2 -- 1999 – The first web-based operating system is created
WEB 11.0 – RSS – "Newspapers Deemed Obsolete"
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) was created due to the lack of a universal feed format. The creation of RSS means that users could now "subscribe" to feeds containing video, audio, text, or graphics. Users no longer had to trawl the web for new information, they could "subscribe" to a feed and have it sent to them directly.
WEB 12.0 – REMOTE SCRIPTING – "Waiting For 4 Seconds Now History!"
Remote scripting allows scripts running inside a browser to exchange information with a server, so that scripts could be triggered locally, processed remotely and have information returned directly to the browser. This made the web faster and easier to use, and removed the need to refresh the page for simple tasks like sorting.
WEB 12.1 -- 2001 – Blogs evolve from online diaries
WEB 13.0 – PODCASTING – "Now Everyone Can Avoid Listening To You By Choice Rather Than Circumstance!"
Podcasting originated as a portmanteau of the iPod® and broadcasting, although "portable on demand broadcasting" has now become the widely-accepted definition. Originally Podcasting was created to allow individuals to distribute their own radio shows, but it has become popular for a wide variety of things, from educational materials to the latest gaming news. Podcasting opens up distribution of audio content to anyone with a server, with users "subscribing" to the RSS feeds that appeal to them.
WEB 13.1 -- 2002 – Folksonomy is created, giving rise to "tags"
WEB 14.0 – VIDEO PODCASTING – "Web-Based One-Sided Conversations"
Shortly after Podcasting became popular, video Podcasting was created as a means to send the equivalent of TV episodes to users. Though similar to podcasting, the content was not limited to just "TV episodes". Video Podcasting opens up the video medium so that making a TV show is possible for anyone.
WEB 15.0 – VOIP – "High Tech, Dodgy Sounding Free Calls"
With the Voice Over Internet Protocol, telephone audio is sent over the internet, rather than a traditional phone line. This removes almost all cost involved, and also removes the need to have a physical phone line. What this means for consumers is calling becomes much simpler, easier and significantly cheaper.
WEB 16.0 – SAAS – "The Industry Makes a SaaS of Itself."
Software as a Service (SaaS) is just a new term for a concept that has been around since the dawn of the internet (ASP from 1970). SaaS refers to using a piece of software run/provided through the internet, and instead of paying a large one-off purchase price, you "rent" the software for as long as needed. So while SaaS is the buzzword of the day, the concept is decades old.
So if you follow the basic rule that each total upgrade is a new ".0" then we are nowhere near Web 2.0. The story is really one of falling price, increasing reliability and bandwidth, coupled with ubiquitous access.
Simply put, "Web 2.0" is just shorthand for the development process outlined above. Bottom line, the web really becoming what the web really always should have been.(*)
source: computerkokoak
SEO Training: Setting Goals
Before you can really get started you have to know what you want to achieve with your Web site. There could be a number of goals that you have in mind but your first step is get a clear picture of what you want the outcome to be. It could be:
• To gain higher rankings.
• To redesign your Web site to be more user friendly.
• To implement SEO basics throughout your site to make it search engine friendly.
• To increase your visitor response online.
• To open additional windows to your site through social media marketing.
• To launch an article marketing plan.
• Or all of the above.
What ever your goal is it is important to write it down and post it where you can see it every day. “Goals that are not written down are just wishes.”
