Writing in English as your 2nd second language can be really hard, especially when you try to make your point and argument clear and precise in a stylistic and shortest way possible. Hello blogging versus rant versus academic writing. I know that Jerry Yang was (and is as uber Yodel and Chief Yahoo) writing his memos to Yahoo! employees in lowercase letters, only (but blogs on Yodel Anecdotal normal). So I tried that, to be able to pay more attention to the topic and not to lose touch while reviewing grammar and style on the go.

Time Constraints Versus Quality.

It saved me time writing the posts, as intended. But after some couple of days passed and re-reading it, I discovered that it reads terrible. So I wanted to let you know about the failed experiment. Not only might my readers having a hard time reading along the lines, but I can imagine that readers think I am lazy to use the shift key, or that I am not familiar the English grammar rules. Let me put it that way, I am not a professional.

The Economic Part. The Bright Side.

Thanks to technology, my effort (and failed experiment) wasn’t worthless, now that you know all. You don’t make the same mistake, as you have read and learned (and you even had not to leave your home to learn this), and saved lots of your resources.

Example; considered time as finite resource and everything else held constant. Because of advances in medical technology, an increase of life expectancy means your time is not finite anymore. With even more time into the future of medical discoveries, infinite life (a reversal or stopping of cell damage) is maybe possible. Not necessarily for my generation, but for my kids who take a tour to Mars every now and then.

————–

Further Readings:

• London School of Economics (LSE) has a style guide for its web presence.
• Associated Press (AP) has dedicated a whole book and web presence and Twitter account. You might want to have a look at scribd too.
• There is a GNU style checker.
• A little googling will give you some ideas, what to look for when you are writing, um, blogging.
  • Good Blog Writing Style.
  • Ten Tips for writing a blog post (ProBlogger.com).
  • The 4 Pillars of Writing Exceptional Blogs (ProBlogger.com).
  • Blogging Tips for Beginners (ProBlogger.com).
  • Writing Style to Keep in Mind for Blog Posts.
  • Blogging Techniques for Getting More Hits.
  • 20 Usability Tips For Your Blog (check out the follow-on resources).
  • George Orwell’s 5 Rules of Effective Writing (check this out too).

I know I am a little late with this blog post, but I needed a little time to fully think about all the implications of the Microsoft/Yahoo deal.   Unlike Microsoft’s previous attempts to buy Yahoo, Microsoft agreed to have a Search partnership for the next 10 years with Yahoo.

After looking over the deal multiple times Microsoft has to thank Yahoo’s former CEO Jerry Yang for this deal.  When Microsoft originally offered to buy Yahoo in 2008 for $47.5 billion, Yang was very adamant in not selling to Microsoft, citing that Yahoo was worth much more than the offer.  Now a little more than 1 year later Microsoft ended up getting what they wanted; Yahoo’s search technology, and for considerably less on what they offered in 2008.

So what will come out of this partnership?   How will it affect the future of Search?   Will it help to innovate search or slow it down?  What does the deal mean for the everyday Internet user?  How does Google feel about the deal?

With this partnership Microsoft will roughly have 28% of the market share in paid search.  That means an increase in competition on MSN AdCenter.  So we can say goodbye to the good ole days when MSN AdCenter was a cheaper solution to Google AdWords.  PPC Advertisers will be forced to bid more on keywords to compete with all the new advertisers.  I am waiting to see if the increase competition will have an effect on AdCenter’s high conversion rate.  I guess we will know the answer in the first quarter of next year.

The competition won’t only effect PPC   advertisers; it will also affect SEOs who will start optimizing their pages for Bing.   Unfortunately this increased competition will include all the spammers, which will dilute Bing’s search engine results page (SERP).  It will take time to refine their algorithm in order to shift out all the spammers, and to clean up their SERP.   Will this initial attack from the spammers drive away users? We don’t know?

What will happen to all of Yahoo’s other properties?  Yahoo Directory is one of the major directories on the Internet right now.  Will a link from it still be valuable? Will we loose Yahoo Link Data, one of the largest providers of link info in SEO?  What about one of my favorite Social Bookmarking site Delicious?  Will it dissolve when the deal is finalized?

I guess will we have to just wait and see what will truly come out of this deal.

Microsoft Wins, Yahoo Folds, Google Still Reigns in Search Game

Microsoft gave Yahoo bare minimum terms in their new 10-year partnership: a fortified combined search engine off of which it can sell and retain advertising revenues, and a possible exit strategy down the road.  Either way Microsoft wins.

The long-anticipated search and advertising pact announced today did not include the favorable terms — primarily billions in upfront revenue guarantees– expected by disappointed Yahoo investors, who initially drove the company’s stock down 12 percent.

Whether by design or coincidence, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer played his cards well over the companies’ tumultuous three-year negotiations. Yahoo initially rejected a $47.5 billion buyout offer from Microsoft in 2008 as well as a proposed search partnership with a $1 billion upfront payout last year — both under the leadership of former CEO Jerry Yang.

By comparison, the pact finally approved by new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Yahoo board members (including five percent activist shareholder Carl Icahn) is modest, complex and unlikely to create meteoric value. It’s almost as if there is another shoe to drop in the Microsoft-Yahoo two-step.

At best, Yahoo will realize $500 million in annual operating profit and is guaranteed only 88 percent of ad sales from its affiliated and owned search business in the first five years. Yahoo will see $275 million in cost savings and $200 million less in capital expenditures annually once the companies’ businesses are fully integrated in about two years. Weak advertising and shaky initiatives will depress 2009 operating cash flow 10 percent and drive down revenues 13 percent, analysts estimate.

In the end, Microsoft appears to have paid much less for what it wanted: a way to catapult its well-regarded new Bing search engine (with a mere three percent share) into second place by merging it with Yahoo’s 20 percent market share. It is the only way Microsoft search could get big fast and the only way Yahoo can bolster its waning fortunes.

By joining forces, Microsoft and Yahoo say they can be a more effective competitor, even though their aggregate affiliated 30 percent search share is less than half that of Google’s. Microsoft and Yahoo could grow their gross search revenues, after synergies, an average 6.6 percent annually over the next five years, analysts say.

But there is another way to look at this deal.

Yahoo has abruptly thrown in the towel on its decade-long pursuit of branded search that included investing $160 million to build Panama, the technology it will use to sell advertising across the companies’ merged search platform. Yahoo will receive only 88 percent (instead of 100 percent) of paid search revenues, hoping the balance will be made up from an expanded, improved search base. There is no evidence of the “boatload of money” in this deal that Bartz promises.

Bartz’s rationalizes that Yahoo has become less a portal and more of a content company, which seems to put it on the same migration track as rival AOL, another diminished Internet brand.

Even if a Microsoft-Yahoo cabal tried to acquire or align with AOL, when it is spun off from Time Warner later this year, the three companies’ combined search share would barely make a dent in Google’s nearly 14 billion domestic searches last month, or which accounted for 65 percent of that market. Still, that won’t keep Google from pressing for antitrust scrutiny, despite having been the one to “power” Yahoo’s searches years ago.

Some of the questions raised by this new search pact are far more intriguing than the details:

• How hard did Yahoo try to secure a $2 billion to $3 billion upfront payment of guaranteed revenue from Microsoft, and why didn’t they get it?
• Will the rationale of maintaining separate display ad operations be an effective deterrent to rigorous antitrust review?
• Why has Microsoft grossly underestimated the importance of mobile search by failing to include it in this deal?
• How will two companies that took three years of grueling negotiations to get this far successfully manage the integration and execution risks ahead?
• Is the five-year limit to Yahoo’s favored ad revenue split, after which Microsoft could resume its own ad sales, designed to force Yahoo into a full-blown merger?

Some on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley consider this deal a precursor to a complete MicroHoo union — and that just might be more lucrative and easier to effect.

Créditos: Yahoo

Microsoft e Yahoo se unem contra o Google

A Microsoft finalmente convenceu o Yahoo a ceder o controle de seu serviço de buscas, o segundo mais popular da internet, e juntar forças para combater o domínio do Google no mercado de publicidade online. Ontem, Microsoft e Yahoo anunciaram um acordo, válido por 10 anos, pelo qual o Yahoo passa a adotar a tecnologia de buscas da Microsoft, chamada Bing, e seu sistema de vendas de anúncios online.

Com a audiência do Yahoo, a fatia da Microsoft no mercado americano de buscas passa de 8% para 28%. A gigante do software espera, com o acordo, tirar mercado do Google, que fatura mais de US$ 20 bilhões por ano em publicidade na web. Segundo dados da ComScore, o Google tem 65% do mercado de buscas nos EUA.

Pelo acordo, a Microsoft fica responsável pela venda automática de anúncios pela internet (que é onde o Google faz dinheiro), e a equipe do Yahoo pelo atendimento de grandes contas, com seus vendedores. O Yahoo não recebeu nenhum dinheiro antecipado pelo acordo, mas vai ficar com uma participação nas vendas. Os sites do Yahoo atraem mais de 570 milhões de pessoas por mês em todo o mundo.

O acordo foi recebido pelo mercado acionário como uma derrota para o Yahoo. Há 14 meses, a Microsoft ofereceu US$ 9 bilhões para fechar uma parceria de publicidade em buscas com o Yahoo, que não foram aceitos. O Yahoo também recusou uma proposta de US$ 47,5 bilhões que a Microsoft tinha feito para comprar toda a empresa. Agora, O Yahoo vai receber 88% da publicidade das buscas em seu site, o que está acima da comissão normal de 70% a 80%. Com a redução de gastos com tecnologia de busca, o Yahoo planeja ampliar seu lucro operacional anual em cerca de US$ 500 milhões. Mas não antes de 2012, quando as empresas esperam que o acordo esteja realmente funcionando.

“Acho que muitas pessoas estão olhando para os números e vendo um monte de pontos de interrogação, quando esperavam ver pontos de exclamação”, disse o analista Scott Kessler, da Standard & Poors. As ações do Yahoo caíram ontem 12% na bolsa eletrônica Nasdaq, cotadas a US$ 15,14, ante a decepção dos investidores pela ausência de um pagamento imediato. As ações da Microsoft subiram 1,41%, para US$ 23,80, e as do Google caíram 0,82%, para US$ 436,24.

RAPIDEZ

A presidente do Yahoo, Carol Bartz, levou somente seis meses para fechar um acordo com a Microsoft, coisa que os seus dois predecessores, Terry Semel e Jerry Yang, cofundador do Yahoo, não pareceram interessados em fazer. “Esse negócio corrige muitos erros estúpidos feitos pelas administrações anteriores”, disse Rob Enderle, analista de tecnologia, para quem o Yahoo deveria gastar mais energia no desenvolvimento de serviços para competir com empresas como o Facebook.

Logo depois que assumiu a presidência da empresa, Carol disse que estaria disposta a negociar o serviço de buscas do Yahoo por “navios de dinheiro”, contanto que a companhia mantivesse o acesso adequado às informações sobre os interesses de seus usuários. Ontem, ela previu que o acordo irá enriquecer a empresa no longo prazo. “Esse acordo traz navios de valor para o Yahoo, seus usuários e o setor”, disse a executiva.

O Yahoo terá acesso limitado aos dados sobre as buscas, que permitem adaptar os anúncios aos interesses dos usuários. O presidente da Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, mal conseguia conter a animação de ter conseguido finalmente convencer o Yahoo, algo que ele vem tentando há pelo menos três anos.

“Estou muito animado”, disse Ballmer. “Isso é o que venho dizendo basicamente pelos últimos 18 meses: o mundo será mais bem servido para consumidores, anunciantes e produtores de conteúdo, e haverá mais competição para o Google, se conseguíssemos de alguma maneira juntar a Microsoft e o Yahoo em buscas.”

APROVAÇÃO

As autoridades antitruste terão de aprovar o plano, para garantir que o acordo não prejudique a competição ou ameace a privacidade das pessoas que usam mecanismos de busca. Durante o processo de aprovação, o acordo também deve receber oposição do Google, que desistiu de uma parceria em publicidade de buscas com o Yahoo no ano passado, depois de ser pressionado pelo Departamento de Justiça dos Estados Unidos.

O Yahoo e a Microsoft esperam uma “análise detalhada” do acordo, mas estão “esperançosos” de que receberão um sinal verde das autoridades no começo de 2010. Ontem, o Google disse somente que está “interessado” na parceria, enquanto o presidente da comissão antitruste do Senado dos EUA afirmou que o acordo merece uma “análise cuidadosa”.

Os analistas acham que será difícil para as duas empresas terem um impacto importante na participação do Google no mercado de buscas, mas que a parceria foi um passo na direção correta. As informações são do jornal O Estado de S.Paulo.

Créditos: Yahoo

Pois é vamo ver no que vai dar isso…

You probably think that this post will  be about GDP and the recession…in case you didn’t see, GPD, the measure of all goods and services, shrunk less than expected so  the world thinks that its raining gold chips…But this post is about microsoft and yahoo…I know, I know, its been in the news a lot lately…im only making this post so that you will know what they are talking about the next time you see those names in the news and so you can stop wondering if your yahoo email account will go away…I will get something out very soon about GDP

So early last year, there was this big thing going on with Microsoft and Yahoo!…microsoft saw all this money that google was making with their search engine, with about 60%-70% of market share (market share is the portion of the total market currently available in a particular product or segment or sector)…so like any good opportunist or hater (there is a fine line) would, they wanted in on the action…in order for them to get a good head start, they figured that they would try to buy the next largest player, Yahoo!, who at the time had about 16% market share…at first it seemed like a match made in heaven…microsoft wanted to buy  yahoo and yahoo wanted to be bought… but there was jerry yang.  Jerry Yang was co-founder and CEO of yahoo at the time…this guy got into an all-out game of poker with Microsoft and their CEO Steve Ballmer…and ballmer read him like book!…On Jan 31, 2008 the closing price of yahoo was $19.18 and on Feb 1, 2008 microsoft offered yahoo $31 per share, representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion…thats a 62% premium!…but about a week later yang said “no” because he wanted at least $40 per share…so after months of a bunch of back and forth, on 5/3/08, microsoft bumped up the offer to $33 per share and yang said that he wanted $37…unfortunately for yang and yahoo, microsoft withdrew its offer…

There is this guy, or should I say billionaire mogul guy, named Carl Icahn.  He is well known for (obviously) being a billionaire and hostile takeovers…basically, hes been known to buy up all the stock (enough to get a controlling interest – 51%) of a company and force a takeover, hence the term hostile take over (here is a wonderful article about hostile takeovers. if you have questions about the lingo, hit me up)…hes a firecracker…and he sits on the board of a bunch of companies and he owns big chunks of various companies by way of stocks…one of those companies is yahoo.

After the $33 offer, Ichan said that he would try to oust yahoo’s board (shareholders vote on board members) if they don’t reopen talks with Microsoft…to shut him up he got 3 seats on the board, basically giving him more power in the company.

So on November 17, 08 jerry yang stepped down as CEO…and on that day the stock closed at $10.63…on 11/19/08 Ballmer said that Microsoft is “done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo.”… then the next day, it dropped to its all time low of $8.95…

In Jan of this year yahoo got a new CEO, Carol Bartz…and since then the shares have been up 42%… then in April the rumors started that she and steve ballmer were meeting and discussing possible deals…In the meanwhile, Microsoft launched their new search engine “bing” in June…

On Wednesday, july 29 microsoft and yahoo finally reached an agreement…and I say agreement because the actual terms are nothing like the $45+bln buyout that they were tryna do at first…it’s a Partnetship…In the agreement yahoo will get no up front money and microsoft’s bing will power yahoo searches and yahoo will get 88% of the of the revenue of the web-search ads and wont have to bear any of the costs for the first 5 years of the 10-year partnership…yeah thats right, they didn’t get anything…its funny cause people expected a deal like this to bring in $1.5-$3bln up front…especially after bartz said that she wanted to sell the search unit for “boatloads” of money …yahoo says that the deal will add $500mil in annual income and save $200mil in costs…

Right now yahoo’s 20% market share together with bing will put microsoft/yahoo in the competition at almost 30% to compete against googles 65%

In an interview bartz said

“The priority was not to do the deal, the priority was to get the fog away from the company. Yahoo got pegged as a search company and we’re not a search company. Search is only one aspect of what our customers do.”

Hold up, wait a min…if you are as tech un-savvy as me then you are probably wondering “Errr, really? Search is only one aspect? What else do u do” cause I thought search was ALL aspects of what they did…

Well, the search engine is about 45% of their business while their other 2 main businesses are web-search ads and graphical ads…didn’t know this but oh well…seems they are trying to streamline their business to focus on core money makers

That brings us to today…immediately following the news, the market reacted…yahoo stock dropped 12%…and its still down today, last trading at $14.53, down from $17.22, the day before the deal…

Contrary to my opinion, the market and some analysts out there think that yahoo got the short end of the stick…I think that it was a great deal for both parties

What do you think?

and no, your yahoo email wont go away

Micrsoft Captures Yahoo

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_microsoft_yahoo

Jerry what??
Don’t worry you will soon know who he is …

These are the five things you’ve known about him…

1). He is a Chinese American entrepreneur and the co-founder, former CEO of Yahoo! Inc.

2). Yang graduated from Sierramont Middle School, and Piedmont Hills High School, then went on to receive his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University

3). He co-created in April 1994 with David Filo an Internet website consisting of a directory of other websites called “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web”. It was renamed “Yahoo!” (an exclamation).

4). Yang is married to Akiko Yamazaki, born in Costa Rica. She graduated from Stanford University with a degree in industrial engineering. They met each other at Stanford during the Kyoto overseas program in 1992.

5). Jerry Yang and his wife gave USD $75 million to Stanford University, which went to building the “Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building

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1. Larry Page (36 tahun/AS) dan Sergey Brin (35 tahun/AS)

Keduanya merilis Google pada 4 September 1998. Saat itu, mereka baru berusia 25 tahun dan 24 tahun. “Kantor” pertama mereka adalah garasi.
Google, mesin pencari yang bisa menampilkan segala jenis informasi ini, disukai banyak orang – terutama para mahasiswa. Maka, hanya dalam tempo waktu beberapa tahun saja, Google bisa berkembang amat pesat dan meraup keuntungan miliaran dollar AS. Kini, Google bisa disebut sebagai mesin pencari nomor satu di dunia.
Kisah sukses Larry Page dan Sergey Brin dalam menciptakan dan mengembangkan Google telah menjadi inspirasi bagi banyak orang muda di dunia ini, khususnya para penggemar teknologi informasi. Mereka berharap bisa membuat program baru yang berguna bagi masyarakat dunia dan menguntungkan dari segi finansial.

2. Mark Zuckerberg (kini 25 tahun/asal AS)

Ketika menciptakan situs jejaring sosial Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg baru berusia 19 tahun. Ia membuat Facebook untuk membantu membangun jaringan sosial bagi remaja di kampusnya saat itu, Universitas Harvard, Amerika Serikat.
Kini, Facebook merupakan situs jejaring sosial terbesar kedua setelah MySpace. Di bawah pimpinan Sang Penemu, situs ini terus tumbuh hari demi hari. Jutaan pengguna baru terus mendaftar setiap bulan!

3. Jimmy Donal Wales (kini 43 tahun/AS)

Jimmy Wales (40 tahun) yang lebih dikenal dengan sebutan nama Jimbo, salah
satu pendiri dari Online-Leksikon Wikipedia. Pada saat ini sedang mempersiapkan peranti lunak search engine (mesin pencari) untuk menyaingi Google dan Yahoo.
Wikipedia di dirikan oleh Jimmy Wales pada tahun 2001 dengan modal awal sekitar AS$500.000 yang dikeluarkan dari kocek pribadinya sendiri. Wikipedia adalah ensiklopedia online yang dapat dibaca dan disunting oleh siapapun juga. Isinya ditulis oleh para pengunjungnya sama seperti juga koran online www.kabarindonesia.com yang disunting oleh para pembacanya sendiri sesuai dengan mottonya: Dari kita untuk kita.

4. Steve Shih Chen (31 tahun/Taiwan-AS), Jawed Karim (30 tahun/Jerman-AS), Chad Hurley (32 tahun/AS)

Ketiganya adalah pencipta dari situs berbagi video online, YouTube. Mereka mendirikan YouTube pada 2005. Ketika itu, Chad berusia 28 tahun dan Steve 27 tahun.
Pada Oktober 2006, YouTube diakuisisi (diambil alih kepemilikannya) oleh Google. Nilainya: 1,65 miliar dollar AS (Rp16,9 triliun).
5. Jerry Yang (40 Tahun/Taiwan-AS) dan David Filo (42 tahun/AS)

Pada tahun 1995, kedua orang ini menemukan Yahoo!, situs mesin pencari kedua terbesar setelah Google. Saat itu, Jerry berusia 26 tahun dan Filo 28 tahun.
Tahun lalu, perusahaan raksasa Microsoft sempat ingin membeli Yahoo!. Nilai tawaran yang dibicarakan: 44,6 miliar dollar AS (Rp458,8 triliun). Rencana ini memang batal. Setelah itu, Microsoft dan Yahoo! tidak menampik mengenai kemungkinan kerja sama di masa mendatang.
6. Matt Mullenweg (25 tahun/AS)

Matt Mullenweg adalah pencipta situs penyedia blog gratisan WordPress. Ia baru berusia 19 tahun ketika mulai menciptakan cikal bakalnya.
WordPress menjadi tenar dalam waktu singkat. Alasannya, situs ini mudah dipakai dan selalu diperbarui. Hingga tahun 2008, tercatat ada 230 juta pengakses tetap dengan 6,5 miliar halaman WordPress yang bisa dilihat. Lalu, ada 35 juta posting baru dengan tambahan rata-rata empat juta posting setiap bulan.
Matt, yang pernah datang ke Jakarta pada Januari 2009 ini mengatakan, ia tidak akan menjual WordPress ke perusahaan besar dengan harga’ selangit’. Ia juga bilang, tidak mencari keuntungan dari WordPress. Keuntungan sudah ia dapatkan dari beberapa perusahaan, yang dimilikinya.

7. Tom Anderson (38 tahun/Amerika Serikat)

Tom Anderson merilis MySpace pada bulan Agustus 2003. Ada kesimpang siuran data mengenai usianya saat itu, namun berbagai sumber menyebut Tom berusia kurang dari 30 tahun ketika menciptakan MySpace.
Saat ini, MySpace adalah salah satu situs jejaring sosial paling besar di dunia, yang bersaing ketat dengan Facebook. MySpace telah digunakan lebih dari 100 juta orang, dengan pengguna terbesar berasal dari kawasan Amerika Serikat.
Kelebihan MySpace terletak pada bidang musik. Ketika fasilitas musik terbaru (yaitu “audio streaming” gratis) diluncurkan pada 25 September 2008, hanya dalam beberapa hari saja, ada miliaran lagu yang didengarkan oleh para penggunanya. Kelebihan ini membuat banyak orang memperkirakan bahwa MySpace bisa mempengaruhi industri musik di internet.

8. Blake Aaron Ross (23 tahun/AS)
Blake Ross adalah pemuda jenius yang menciptakan Mozilla, fasilitas penjelajah internet. Mozilla diluncurkan untuk umum pada November 2004. Saat itu, usia Blake baru 19 tahun!
Mozilla kemudian digabungkan dengan Firefox, program yang diciptakannya bersama Dave Hyatt. Maka, setelah itu, namanya menjadi Mozilla Firefox.
Dengan cepat, Mozilla Firefox diterima para pengguna internet di dunia. Ia, antara lain, dinilai lebih aman dan mudah dipakai (dibandingkan dengan para kompetitornya). Ia juga dinilai mampu merebut sebagian pasar fasilitas penjelajah internet, yang selama ini dikuasai oleh Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Banyak orang memuji kesuksesan Blake Ross. Direktur engineering Yayasan Mozilla, Chris Hoffman, mengatakan, Dalam dunia ‘Open Source’, posisi seseorang tergantung pada keahliannya. Dan Blake Ross memiliki semua keahlian yang dibutuhkan.

9. Andrew Darwis (30 tahun/Indonesia)

Kalo yang satu ini gak tau deh jenius apa nggak.. Yang jelas bagi teman-teman kaskuser pasti gak ada yang keberatan. Yupz andrew Darwis memang layak masuk bagian yang merubah duniamu. Pendiri forum terbesar di Indonesia ini merupakan seorang godfather di dunia maya.
Lahir pada 20 July 1979, sosok yang kerap dipanggil mimin (admin) atau momod (moderator) oleh para kaskuser ini mendirikan Kaskus dengan dasar “Freedom of Speech” (FOS). Karena FOS merupakan hak asasi setiap orang. Dan gak satu orang pun di dunia yang berhak untuk melarang orang bersuara dan berpendapat..

Yahoo! says the Board of Directors has appointed Tim Morse as chief financial officer (CFO). Reporting directly to Carol Bartz, the chief executive officer of Yahoo!, Morse will be responsible for the company’s finance, investor relations, and mergers and acquisitions groups.

He will commence employment on June 17 and will assume the responsibilities of CFO on July 1, 2009. 

“Tim is a natural fit for Yahoo!,” believes Bartz.

Prior to joining Yahoo!, he was the CFO of Altera Corporation, a semiconductor company specializing in programmable logic devices for communications, industrial, and consumer applications. Morse previously served as the CFO and general manager of business development for General Electric Plastics. A 15 year veteran of GE, he also held a variety of positions at GE Plastics, GE Appliances, and GE Capital in North America, Europe, and Asia. 

“Yahoo! is an amazing brand with a unique combination of assets, and I am extremely excited to be joining a finance team with a deep commitment to financial excellence and fiscal discipline,” said Morse.

Morse holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and operations and strategic management from the Boston College Carroll School of Management.

Among the other recent appointments, in March Elisa Steele joined the company as chief marketing officer (CMO). Among an array of responsibilities, Steele looks after Yahoo!’s brand and its global marketing strategy. She too reports to Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz. (Read: Yahoo! Searches CMO, Gets Elisa Steele)

Earlier in January this year, Yahoo! had appointed Bartz, who was executive chairman of Autodesk, as its CEO and a member of the Board of Directors. In November last year, Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang had decided to quit and resume his role as Chief Yahoo! and a Board Member.

May 18, 2029—U.S. smart appliances are scoring far lower in energy conservation, safety and overall reliability than their counterparts in other countries, a new study shows.

The Program for Inspecting Smart Systems (PISS) in March conducted dozens of tests on a variety of appliances riding on the smart grid. PISS found that smart thermostats scored lower in energy cost savings than did smart appliances in 25 of the 30 participating countries. Smart refrigerators scored lower than 24 out of 30 in identifying spoiled food.  Smart tools scored lower than 21 out of 30 in automatically shutting off before the user does something stupid, like sever a hand with an electric saw.  Smart coffeemakers scored lower than 18 out of 30 in brewing a tasty cup of joe.  And smart home odor detectors failed to notify parents when their babies diapers needed changing.

The release of the report prompted U.S. Technology Secretary Jerry Yang to declare a crisis in the American smart grid.

“It’s a sad day when people in Turjikistan can rely on their bedroom mirrors to remind them to zip up their fly,” Yang said, “and Americans can’t even get their refrigerators to tell them when their milk is about to go bad.”

Well not really. Restructuring is an ugly word, especially during an economic downturn and that’s exactly what’s happening behind closed doors at Yahoo. The co-founder, Jerry Yang has stepped down from his role as the CEO and handed over to Carol Bartz. And her first job has been to continue with the process of lay-off which had been going on at Yahoo for a while. For that matter corporate pruning has been the norm in tech companies at Silicon Valley, including at Google. However, the continuing lay-off at Yahoo and shutting off its series of non-earning, frivolous projects has created anxiety among Yahoo employees. This can not be good for the company which is already tattering at the edges ever since the mega deal with Microsoft went sour.

On the upside, Yahoo search seems to be gaining traction over the years. Despite its various failed pet projects like Geo-cities ( which is in line to be axed and no longer offers new accounts), Yahoo search is actually becoming more popular than that of Google. This is specially the case in Asia, where web searchers prefer Yahoo to Google. I have to admit, that recently Google is dishing out bad search results for me as well. Either Google is slipping from its  pedestal or web users have found  tricks to rank their worthless websites higher on the search engine.  Either way, Google is facing competition from Yahoo and this trend may be here to stay.

Try these links for more info :

1. Yahoo! Profits Likely Down, More Layoffs Possible – Forbes

2. As Yahoo! Layoff Start Today, More May Come Soon; Six Offices Closed In Europe – Forbes

3. Hope And Fear Mark Yahoo! At Crossroads – The Globe

Google just cannot grow as quickly given its size.  Although Google contiues to take marketshare from Microsoft and Yahoo it is being hurt by the economy like everyone else.

My quote from Ecommerce Times on Google’s Growth slowing – http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/Google-Lumbers-In-With-Modest-Q1-Growth-66840.html

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April 12, 1996: “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” goes public for the first time. The Initial Public Offering [IPO] sold shares for $13 at the beginning of the day, peaking at $43, and closing at $33, raising $33.8 million. The website was started in January 1994 while its creators were students at Stanford University and was incorporated on March 2, 1995. Their hobby blossomed while they worked out of a trailer. Their lists of favorite sites on the Internet became too large, too long, too complicated. They set up categories, then subcategories and then, became their new business.

You say you’ve never heard of this? Sure you have. The founders, David Filo and Jerry Yang changed the name to a backronym [acronyms that are created to form the letters for a word that one already has in mind] for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. Or Yahoo! The two men insist they picked the name because it means “rude, unsophisticated, uncouth.”

Yang was born in Taiwan and came to the US when he was eight, knowing only one word in English – shoe. He went on to earn BS and MS degrees from Stanford University. He was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. His degrees are in electrical engineering. Filo was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Louisiana. His BS degree is from Tulane University. He parlayed his computer engineering degree into a MS from Stanford. Both men are currently on leave from Yahoo! (although both remain Chief Yahoos!) and are working towards their PhDs in electrical engineering. Both are students at Stanford.

At its IPO, there were a total of 49 employees working for Yahoo! Today there is a global network which includes 25 world properties and serves 345 million individuals each month. Yahoo! is a portal, an email service, instant messaging service, message boards, chats, news service, games, shopping, search engine, and Yahoo! groups. Ten years later, they claim they are the number one Internet brand and reach the largest audience worldwide.

“The internet is not for sissies.” – Paul Vixie

“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” – Mitchell Kapor

“It’s been my policy to view the Internet not as an ‘information highway,’ but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies.” – Mike Royko

“What, exactly, is the Internet?  Basically it is a global network exchanging digitized data in such a way that any computer, anywhere, that is equipped with a device called a “modem” can make a noise like a duck choking on a kazoo.” – Dave Barry 

Y es que no siempre me pregunté sobre el profundo y enigmático significado del nombre de uno de los portales más grandes de internet (Yahoo!), hasta que por casualidad encontré un par de datos interesantes en una revista (Historia y Vida) que termine de completar en la siempre tan primordial Wikipedia.

La versión real sobre el origen del nombre que circula en la empresa se basa en la obra: Los viajes de Gulliver (más que cuento infantil, una sátira política), escrita por Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). Ahí se menciona y describe a los Yahoos como criaturas salvajes, sucias y de costumbres desagradables; iguales, según el autor, a los humanos que pretende caricaturizar en la obra.

Todo lo anterior se relaciona con el nombre que ahora tiene el portal, pues el padre de uno de los fundadores de la empresa, David Filo, se refería a su hijo y al también co-fundador Jerry Yang como “un par de yahoos”, en alusión a su naturaleza inquieta. Motivo por el que optarón por ese nombre en lugar del que habían escogído inicialmente: “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web”.

Aunque hay una versión que dice que en realidad Yahoo! proviene del acrónimo “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle” (Más Otro Oráculo Oficioso Jerárquico).

Elisa Steele has joined the company as chief marketing officer. Among an array of responsibilities, Steele will look after Yahoo!’s brand and its global marketing strategy. She reports to Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz.

“Yahoo!’s marketing strategy and teams have become decentralized over time – hiring Elisa in the CMO role will quickly mobilize our plan to integrate the function globally and more effectively represent the Yahoo! brand,” believes Bartz.

Earlier in January this year, Yahoo! had appointed Bartz, who was executive chairman of Autodesk, as its CEO and a member of the Board of Directors. In November last year, Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang had decided to quit and resume his role as Chief Yahoo! and a Board Member.

Prior to joining Yahoo!, Steele was senior vice president of corporate marketing at NetApp, where she handled the company’s global brand strategy including global communications, corporate relations, and integrated marketing functions. 

Before NetApp, Steele managed Sun’s integrated marketing and merchandising activities. Yahoo! says her professional experience also includes management positions at iPlanet eCommerce Solutions, JavaSoft, and AT&T. 

“I’m excited to join the team and help unleash the incredible power of the Yahoo! brand,” said Steele. “I look forward to working closely with Carol and the entire organization to help renew the company’s focus on its customers and to reassert the brand’s relevance around the world.” 

She holds a master of business administration degree from San Francisco State University and a bachelor of business administration degree from the University of New Hampshire.

Photo courtesy: Yahoo!