Microsoft may get through the Yahoo deal within weeks

Deal between Microsoft and Yahoo is again gearing up and catching heat. The two companies have again started taking the deal ahead and talks are on aggressively between the two as per the sources.

Activist investor Carl Icahn spoke out in favor of a search deal between Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp, as talks between the two companies appeared to regain momentum.

Icahn declined to comment on the state of any negotiations between Yahoo and Microsoft. He had tried to broker a partnership between the two companies last year, when talks on Microsoft's $47.5 billion takeover bid for Yahoo fell apart.

Here is what Icahn told to Reuters in a phone interview: "I've been a strong advocate of getting a search deal done with Microsoft," "It would enhance value if a deal got done, because of the synergies involved,"

Microsoft and Yahoo are close to a long-discussed search and online advertising deal, which could be announced in the next week according to sources.

AllThingsDigital blog said a deal may involve Microsoft paying Yahoo several billion dollars upfront to take over its search advertising business and guarantee certain payments back to Yahoo.

The latest discussions involve a partnership in which Microsoft would handle search capabilities for Yahoo, while Yahoo could potentially handle online advertising for the two online sites.

Microsoft is Optimistic for Bing

Bing is now one month old and has succeed to make a mark and to prove that it has the ability to conquer the Search Engine market. At least, Microsoft believes so.

Bing came up with some great features and commitment to provide good search results. Bing is already on its way to fulfill those commitments and has impressed a portion of internet search users.

In the early stage, Bing earned highest ever 9.21 percent of U.S. search share in first week of June but fall back to around 8.45 percent in last week of June. The hype and marketing efforts from Microsoft for Bing is still going on. Microsoft is quite optimistic about Bing and believes that Bing has the potential to conquer the Search Engine Crown. However, the fact is it still trailing behind Yahoo! (around 11 percent) and big time rival Google which is still dominating with approx. 78 percent of the U.S. search market share.

The results may give heart to Microsoft, which is investing heavily in its loss-making online services business and is refusing to cede the market to Google. At first sight, a 1 percent increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing but the underlying trend appears positive," StatCounter Chief Executive Adohan Cullen said in a statement.

Considering the fact that Microsoft is still hoping to succeed in acquiring or getting tied up with Yahoo! to prove Bing a credible competitor to Google, the chances for the same seem to be quite less.

However, Steve Ballmer and Co. is very much positive on Bing and pushing all their efforts to make sure that more and more people start switching over to Bing from Google and Yahoo! The much talked $100 Million marketing investment on Bing may play a major role give Bing a considerable start.

Looking and Searching beyond Google, Bing, Yahoo!

90% of the internet users use either of these: Google, Bing, Yahoo! to search. These three have been dominating the search market for past many years. My question is how many of us know that all these three are not providing the old data? How many of us know that when their search database is regularly updated? Until and unless either of these three's robots do not crawl a website, it will not show into their results.

But what about the websites and information which are of high quality but not been crawled for whatsoever reasons?? Suppose I launched 5 different websites providing high quality & useful information but neither of Google, Yahoo & Bing crawled it?? The internet user will suffer from missing my website's information!!

The time has now come to look and search beyond Google, Bing and Yahoo!! There are no. of other search engines who are providing sepcific search results based on Verticals...

Some of the searchengines to look for are:

1. Hunch (it is the real decision engine)
2. Kayak (good for travel search)
3. Amazon (you know it very well)
4. Upcoming (for new events)
5. DeeperWeb.com
6. Indeed.com (Great for Job Search in U.S.)
7. Travelocity.com (Travel guide)

The list goes on....Look for these and you may find out them better than the Giants!!!

Yahoo! 360° is finally closing on July 13, 2009 - What Next???

It's official. Yahoo! is closing its Yahoo! 360 on July 13, 2009 to focus on making new profiles for users on Yahoo!

The users can archive and move their information on their computers and to their profiles on Yahoo!. Click here to find out what you can do to preserve your 360° information. After July 13, 2009, your content on Yahoo! 360° will no longer be accessible.

The questions is what's next?? The not so popular Yahoo! 360 had no other choice but to say TATA..Now social networking and blogging becoming more and more popular, Yahoo! is definitely cooking something salable. By acquiring Delicious in 2005, Yahoo made a very right move and which is evident. Now, the speculations are going on that Yahoo! may acquire a very well-known and popular blogging community...The insiders say that the talks are on and something soon will surface....

Let's wait and watch!! 

Yahoo to support Common Tag - Semantic Web Standards

Yahoo! recently announced their role in creating and supporting Common Tag, a new semantic tagging format.

Yahoo! says that Common Tag makes “web content more discoverable” and enables the community to “create more useful applications for aggregating, searching, and browsing the web.” Their blog post mentions that they want to accelerate the structuring of the web, which aligns with their SearchMonkey launch last year, which they said was, in part, an attempt to encourage the use of structured data on the web. This brings to mind a few questions.

Why did the web need a new semantic standard? The Common Tag blog explains:

“Semantic web promises havens. The promise of machines understanding the data and acting on it semi-autonomously. But how do we get there? Not many are willing to put in a lot of work into publishing data in new formats. For the benefit that might or might not come years after enormous resources will be spent?
So why not start with something easy, say tagging? Marking up text with exactly defined concepts. “