According to a tip from one of our readers, Yahoo is planning to open up its services even wider and allow users to sign in without having to use a Yahoo ID. According to our tipster, Yahoo would allow you to log into Yahoo's services while using an email address from any other provider, similar to what Microsoft is doing with its Windows Live ID. If true, this would certainly be in line with some of the announcements that Yahoo made about it's Yahoo Open strategy.
Google has long been offering iPhone-optimized sites for most of its services, as well as a dedicated search application for the iPhone. Yahoo, however, had mostly been lagging behind with respect to dedicated iPhone offerings. Now, Yahoo has unveiled a dedicated iPhone version of its search service, which, among other things, integrates results from SearchMonkey modules and also does a good job at displaying Flickr photos or movie showtimes in the results.
At Intel's Developer Forum, Yahoo today announced an initiative to bring the Internet to your TV set through what it has dubbed the 'Widget Channel.' While many a company has tried to bring the Internet to the living room (and mostly failed in the process), Yahoo is taking a slightly different approach by not trying to bring a full browser experience to the TV, but by creating a platform for widget developers.
It looks like we can finally put the Carl Icahn vs. Yahoo fight behind us. As part of the settlement between the two, Icahn was given three seats on Yahoo's board - one for himself and another two for new members to be appointed by Icahn. After Time Warner denied Icahn's favorite appointee Jon Miller a seat on the board because of a non-compete clause in his old AOL contract, Icahn and Yahoo finally settled on former Viacom president and CEO Frank J. Biondi and former Nextel CEO John H. Chapple.
Yahoo just announced that the close beta period for its location platform Fire Eagle has ended and that the service is now open for everybody. We wrote about Fire Eagle extensively when the beta was first announced. Since then, a number of high-profile services, including Brightkite, Movable Type, Dopplr, and Pownce have implemented Fire Eagle through the numerous APIs Yahoo provides for accessing the service.
Yahoo today announced that it will allow its customers to opt out of customized advertising on Yahoo.com. Yahoo made this announcement in a response to the an inquiry by U.S. Congressman John Dingell (D- Mich.). Just yesterday, Google had announced a similar opt-out program for its DoubleClick advertising network. Yahoo's opt-out program won't take effect until the end of this month and will be an enhancement of Yahoo's current privacy policies with regard to customized advertising.
Last Thursday, we reported that Yahoo Music was going to shut down its store and DRM licensing servers on September 30, which was basically going to leave anybody who ever bought music from the Yahoo Music Store without a license to play their music. Now, however, Yahoo has announced that it will issue a refund to its customers for the full value of their purchases. According to a report on CNet, Yahoo is also looking at making copies of the music its customers bought available to them as MP3s without any DRM.
Just last week, we wrote about rumors that Google would be bringing offline access to Gmail and Google Calendar using Gears very soon. Today, Yahoo announced that it will be giving offline access to all free and paid Yahoo Mail users through the Yahoo Zimbra Desktop. This is the first time that all Yahoo users get offline access to their accounts. Zimbra Desktop is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Just last week we said that the proxy fight between Carl Icahn and the Yahoo board was going to drag on until at least August. In a surprising twist of event, it now seems the battle is almost over, as Yahoo today announced an agreement with Icahn, who will get a seat on the Yahoo board. The board will be expanded from 9 to 11 members. At the shareholder meeting in August, 8 of the 9 current board members will stand for re-election.
It seems Mondays are slowly becoming the traditional days for Microsoft/Yahoo updates. Today, Microsoft saw the need to 'set the record straight' after Yahoo had released a statement on Saturday that, according to Microsoft, contained too many inaccuracies to be left uncorrected. Microsoft and Carl Icahn had offered Yahoo a guaranteed search revenue of $2.3 billion annually for five years, but Yahoo rejected this bid on Saturday.
