Big Tech is fighting Big Government in California over a proposed privacy bill that would limit the amount of information that companies can share about their users. A coalition of tech companies including Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Match.com, Twitter and others sent a letter to the California Senate May 16 opposing the bill, saying it is unnecessary and would be detrimental to the tech industry and thus to California's economy.
Proposed by Sen. Ellen Corbett, the bill would force social networks to institute default settings upon registration of what users share on the services. Users can opt to share more information than the default, which would only list the users' city of residence. Tech companies are fighting on the basis that the bill is Draconian and unintuitive and that, as an industry, technology can do better than the California legislature.
According to the New York Times, Yahoo, in a regulatory filing last week, accused Chinese Internet juggernaut Alibaba of selling its payment unit, Alipay, to a company owned by Ali Baba's CEO, Jack Ma, without informing them. Because Yahoo is a partial owner of Alibaba, its stock tanked, to the tune of $2.7 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, presumably out of fear its value was significantly lessened by the move.
Now, in a joint statement, Yahoo and the Alibaba Group have announced they are trying to reconcile.
According to analytics firm StatCounter, the Bing search engine has just overtaken Yahoo for the first time worldwide during the month of February 2011. From StatCounter Global Stats, Bing closed out the month with a 4.37% search share compared with Yahoo's 3.93%. However, both still fall far behind Google's search share of 89.94% of the global market.
Yahoo is reportedly preparing to launch a new publishing platform next week which will deliver personalized news content to mobile devices. The content will come from users' social media connections, like Facebook and Twitter, plus users' declared preferences, search history and other sources.
Although the service will be available on Yahoo's website, too, it has been specifically customized for mobile devices like Android smartphones, the iPhone and tablet computers.
Yahoo! Mobile has teamed up with the second largest mobile applications store, GetJar, to integrate mobile apps into its search engine results. Starting now, users conducting searches on their mobile phones via m.yahoo.com, will see a separate section called "apps" which will feature relevant results from GetJar's collection of over 75,000 downloadable applications.
While we've seen Yahoo Mail grow increasingly more social over the past couple years, today the site unveiled its first major redesign in five years. The new Yahoo Mail promises to be faster, spam-free and full of new features that bring apps, social connections and communications beyond the simple email to its users.
Yahoo let the cat out of the bag earlier this week, when one of its executives told Reuters that it would begin offering video chat via Yahoo Messenger to both the iPhone and Android smartphones.
The move would bring Yahoo, which already has 81 million Yahoo Messenger users, again to the forefront of chat services and would pose a serious challenge to Apple's own FaceTime.
Google has announced that Yahoo users will now be able to quickly and easily sign up for Google products using their Yahoo email address. The feature, according to some in the industry, will be a boon for Google and OpenID, the Internet standard behind the feature. But what benefit does this provide for Yahoo?
Will making it easier for Yahoo users to sign in to Google - a direct competitor - draw users away from the portal, search and mail provider, or will it help create an overall better user experience? According to Yahoo, making a process that users were already engaged in simpler will provide a better user experience and keep them interested in one of its most solid products - Yahoo Mail.
Appolicious, the website known for its mobile application recommendations, has today launched a revamped Android-focused offering at AndroidApps.com, complete with an accompanying mobile application.
The Yahoo partner, which originally debuted back in fall of 2009, has consistently offered a useful service that digitizes "word of mouth" recommendations, allowing you to connect with friends who share your interests in order to find new apps. Now that process is even easier, thanks to the new website, its improved search engine an the new Android app.
Both Microsoft and Yahoo have announced that the two companies have begun testing the partnership originally inked a year ago, which will bring Bing search results to Yahoo.
The testing is currently affecting a quarter of Yahoo's search traffic and, while not site-wide, Microsoft is warning on its blog that webmasters should be diligent in making sure that their sites are showing up in search results correctly, lest they be left behind. To that end, Microsoft is releasing a completely redesigned version of its Bing Webmaster Tools.
