It has been pretty obvious that Google has dominated its competitors consistently. Nevertheless, rival Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz has pointed out a certain weakness that might cause Google to worry.

According to Bartz, “Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search. It is only half our business; it’s 99.9% of their business. They’ve got to find other things to do. Google has to grow a company the size of Yahoo every year to be interesting.”

While Google has a market cap of around $169 billion, Yahoo has a market cap of around $24 billion. However, Bartz’s comments do put pressure on the search engine giant to excel in something that is not related to online search!

A man who was mentioned to have “dramatically improved dallasnews.com” would now be the lead editor for Yahoo local news. Looks like Yahoo does believe that quality and creativity of the news that it provides its visitors is a crucial factor in traffic growth. Continue Reading

Carol Bartz, Yahoo CEO

After Carol Bartz succeeded co-founder Jerry Yang as the CEO of Yahoo, she soon got the reputation of a no-nonsense Bartz. However, she’s also popular for her blunt way of speech.

Recently, during Yahoo’s first-quarter earnings conference call on Tuesday, she closed the conference with a surprise by using the F word. This surprise turned aside the mind of attendees who were till then involved in discussions on inline financial results.

Bartz was explaining how her recent restructuring efforts are improving and will improve the down sliding Yahoo when her frustration broke on the management hierarchies and structure at Yahoo. Continue Reading

Barack Obama’s historical presedential win got him the most number of searches and clicks on Yahoo this year. However, “Britney Soears,” tops the list reported Yahoo Inc. The second most searched term was “World Wrestling Entertainment” followed by Obama. Continue Reading

Remember the Billionaire Carl Icahn? The limelight he tried to capture with Microsoft support? Guys, his game is not yet over! Icahn has opposed to sell part of Yahoo to former AOL Chief Executive Jonathan Miller. How will he as he is been fed by Microsoft? Continue Reading

Yahoo! Announced last night that its chief executive officer and co-founder will step down. Jerry Yang, now 40 co-founded Yahoo along with David Filo during 1994. He had returned as the chief last year.

Yahoo has been struggling to stay alive during the recent years after Google attracted all of Yahoo’s loyal followers towards it. Yahoo, once holded dominion over the internet and during 2000 its shares peaked above $400. However, Yahoo slowly started to die after Google was launched and with Googles frequent innovative and creative products, Yahoo was just not able to meet the competition or keep the phase.

Yahoo also has plans to further reduce its workforce by 10 percent which would be 15,000 of its employees. It should also be noted that Yahoo had previously laid off 1000 employees in January this year.

Jerry Yang mentioned that “from founding this company to guiding its growth into a trusted global brand that is [indispensable] to millions of people, I have always sought to do what is best for our franchise.” He further added, “When the Board asked me to become CEO and lead the transformation of the Company, I did so because it was important to re-envision the business for a different era to drive more effective growth. Having set Yahoo! on a new, more open path, the time is right for me to transition the CEO role and our global talent to a new leader.”

Jerry Yang had replaced Terry S. Semel in June, 2007 stating that he would turn the companies future around as the company struggled to bring in revenues. However, Yang couldn’t live up to his promises. Yang was put to severe controversy when he was not ready to sell Yahoo to Microsoft for $33 million. Shareholders accused him stating he was too loyal to his company and dint have the heart to see it being sold to its rivalry.

Yahoo announced that the Inquisitor Safari Plug-in would now be available for Internet Explorer and Firefox users. Yahoo Inquisitor is similar to its Search Assist or the Google Suggest tool. However, it also provides few related websites to choose from.

Yahoo states on its download page that, “Inquisitor understands you, learning and tailoring your results as you search. You can also add more search engines with customized keyboard shortcuts.”. Downloads are available as beta versions currently for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Further in Yahoo Search blog, the Inquisitor team explain, “We’ve also included a bookmark-based retrieval feature for IE. So, if you are looking for a page you bookmarked a few months ago, say an expense report guide on your local Intranet, you won’t need to fumble around your hundreds of bookmarks and folders to find that page. A simple search in Inquisitor will bring it right up.”

The release of recent tools from Yahoo shows that the past leader has still not lost hopes and has determined to survive. May be even rule again one day..

Firefox

Internet Explorer

The drama never seems to get over. After Carl Icahn’s stunt as a middle man between Microsoft and Yahoo, now Eric Jackson has formed the ‘Yahoo! Plan B’ investor community. Who doesn’t want to be in the limelight?

Eric Jackson, who is the founder of a hedge fund company and also an activist investor, has launched a Yahoo! Shareholder community to help share holders discuss and exchange ideas.

With the Yahoo! Annual Meeting slated to start on August 1st, it would be interesting to see the drama on stage.

• Would the Plan B or Carl Icahn win their deal?
• Would there be a full acquisition by Microsoft?
• Would Microsoft buy search alone?
• Would there ever be a deal?
• Would the board of members still be able to hold on to their seats?

Industry analysts also have brought in the question that how do shareholders think that they would still get sizable profit selling to Microsoft. What if Microsoft plays the game after the ball is in its court? Even Microsoft is not performing well with their internet applications. It’s far too worse compared to Yahoo. How do they think that Microsoft can handle Yahoo well and overtake Google?

Though there are a number of shareholders like Jackson and Icahn along industry experts offering their suggestions, there still seems to be no light in the tunnel.

The Olympic fever has caught up with search engines too. Yahoo has come up with various shortcuts to provide live information through its search engine.

The new enhancement for Olympics would include country specific and overall medal count updates, athlete performance and records. It is estimated that 10,500 athletes would participate from 205 nations world wide. It would be a tremendous job in updating all the events and happenings live on the internet. There are 302 events scheduled to be conducted for 28 different sports.

Yahoo has also provided tips to find out the latest in Olympics. Once the Olympics starts, a query for ‘US medal count’ would turn up recent medals won, event results and track records.

You can also see a personalized athlete performance update by just adding his or her name along with the word ‘Olympics’. Yahoo! Sports would also feature news casts, interviews, images and feeds to get the best possible view on Olympics. Isn’t this a good feature from Yahoo? Google should be having something in its pocket too. Lets wait till the Olympics starts off.

Any onlooker who reads for the first time what is going on with Icahn, Microsoft and Yahoo can easily figure out that Icahn is being fed three times a day by Microsoft. The software giant is just using him for its own gain. This is a well planned puzzle that Microsoft has hosted. But are the shareholders so dumb to listen to the Mr. Nobody Icahn?

I feel Microsoft is acting similar to how America acted in the days of war. A decade back America supported Iraq against Iran. Few years after the war was over, Iraq was invaded by America itself. Wow! Doesn’t it sound similar?

It is so obvious that Steve Ballmer is using Carl Icahn to weaken Yahoo to get an at-ease best buy deal done. Even dummies can understand it. But how then do all the investors wag the tail exactly as Icahn does? May be Icahn is so clever to mesmerize the investors and could that be how a college dropout became a billionaire financier and a well-known private equity investor?

Carl Celian Ichan has a history of successful quests and deals by pressurizing or trapping the opponent. Now it’s Yahoo which he’s looking for. Microsoft could well have made a deal with him titled, “If you make it happen, then…” Icahn has now filed a definitive proxy statement nominating that a slate of nine directors should replace Yahoo’s current board members including CEO, Jerry Yang. But why? Is it just because they consider Yahoo is worth much more? Or is it because they are not happy that Yahoo, a once upon a time King is being sold out? What is wrong in that? What else did they do? Did they commit a crime?

Remember how he pressed the board for a seat in Motorola and how Icahn could make the deal with Lear Corporation. If not, you should be remembering at least how he pressured Medimmune Inc to consider takeover bids. If you do wag the tail like he does, then you should be aware.

If you are just a casual onlooker watching what’s going on in the arena, then join me to watch the game of dummies, wealthy mesmerizer, the rich giant and the once-a-king-now-a-poor-man.