LBi Netrank: LBi Netrank newsletter: May 2008

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Acquisitions and Partnerships

Microsoft withdraw Yahoo! offer but consider 'transaction' instead

Microsoft have withdrawn their offer for Yahoo! Microsoft had raised their $44.6bn offer by $5bn, yet the board of Yahoo! specified that they would only sell if the offer was raised by another $5 billion. However, Microsoft are still hoping to undertake a 'transaction' that will not involve an entire acquisition. Watch this space.

Billionaire aims to oust Yahoo! board

Carl Icahn will be filing a slate of alternative directors to replace the current board at the shareholder meeting on the 3rd of July. Icahn purchased 50 million Yahoo! shares after it walked away from Microsoft's offer to buy the company in May. It is believed that he has arranged for at least 12 candidates to take the board's place.

STOP PRESS: As a result of Mr Icahn's intervention, the shareholder meeting has been put back to July.

ITV to buy online ad network?

ITV is reported to be planning to buy an online ad network. This coincides with their plan to make £150 million from online ads by 2010. They have been in negotiation with eType, Ad2One and Unanimis over the last month. ITV are also planning to launch a price comparison service called Priceterrier.

Facebook wants to stay independent

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that Facebook will remain independent. This follows reports of a recent approach to the company by Microsoft, wishing to discuss a full acquisition. However when pressed, Zuckerberg would not comment on a full buyout.

Search News and Research

Google update in May?

It has been widely observed that previously indexed pages have dropped out and odd search results have been showing up, leading to suspicions that Google have quietly delivered a major update.

Yahoo! flags Google.com as malware?

A Yahoo! based bug accidently made it look as though Google's home page was infected with malware. This malware was picked up by Yahoo!'s recently launched Search Scan feature. Yahoo! had somehow mixed up Google.com's URL with another site that actually had Malware on it, showing the Google entry as a site with potentially dangerous downloads.

Google starts blurring faces in Streetview over privacy concerns

Google have begun blurring faces in their Streetview service. According to Google, this not just because of privacy laws, but because the purpose of Street View is to show places, not people.

Google maps adds photos

Photos now appear in the side bar next to the maps and are supplied by Google-owned Picasa and Panoramio. Photos must be geocoded in order to appear and be associated with the mapped area. When the pictures are clicked on, they expand to provide more local images and videos.

IE8 beta 2 due out Q3

Microsoft have announced that the second beta of Internet Explorer 8 will come in the third quarter of this year. The new browser will have full CSS 2.1 and strong HTML 5 support. There will also be interoperability fixes for the Document Object Model (DOM). As a result of this shift towards complying with web standards, a meta tag can be added to web pages to switch IE8 to an IE7 rendering mode.

Google to move into the travel market?

Google are reportedly planning to expand their travel offerings (currently videos and ads from tourism boards). In the future, Google will have marketer-sponsored pages where you can find out more info on a destination and see relevant user-generated content.

New Product Launches

Google Health launches

Google has now given people in the US the opportunity to store and share their personal health records with Google Health. The biggest challenge to the success of this product will likely be concerns over sharing such sensitive information.

Yahoo! SearchMonkey officially released to all developers

Yahoo!'s new Search Monkey application has been launched to all developers, both professional and hobbyists, allowing developers to create fancy and useful enhancements for their sites in Yahoo!'s web results. How this will be rolled out to the general public has yet to be seen.

Google release safe browsing diagnostic tool

This new application from Google will take a URL and display the details of any malware Google has encountered, either now or in the recent past.

Search Engine Market Share Updates

Google has 68% US market share in April 2008 [Hitwise]

Google has nearly 68% of the US market now. Yahoo! has seen a tiny drop of just 0.01%, but MSN dropped by 0.4%. Ask has continued to climb a little.

Google US online video market share estimated at 38% [comScore]

In March, YouTube accounted for 98% of all videos viewed at Google sites with more than 4.3 billion videos viewed. Fox Interactive Media ranked second and Yahoo! third.