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.

Cisco is strengthening its plan to enter into the internet industry with the purchase of the messaging platform, Jabber. Cisco has already purchased WebEx, Securent, PostPath and IronPort. The Jabber acquisition will help Cisco enhance its services across multiple platforms by providing on-premise and on-demand solutions. Doug Dennerline, Cisco senior vice-president of the Collaboration Software Group stated “Enterprise organizations want an extensible presence and messaging platform that can integrate with business process applications and easily adapt to their changing needs.” He also stated that the acquisition will help extend the instant messaging service and make Cisco a interoperability benchmark.Jabber is a popular messaging platform and it is compatible with different systems and platforms. MS Office Com Server, AOL AIM, Google, Yahoo! And IBM Sametime can be used with Jabber. Employees of Jabber would become part of the Collaboration Software Group which consists of Ciscos most profitable businesses like the IOS network operating system, Unified Communications solutions, SaaS offering, policy management and network and service management.

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.

Carl Icahn will never give up! How will he when the software giant Microsoft is backing him and the entire shareholders speak his language? Billionaire investor and shareholder Carl Icahn filed a definitive proxy statement today nominating slate of nine directors to replace Yahoo’s current board members including its Chief Executive Officer, Jerry Yang.

On Sunday, Icahn and Microsoft Corp. jointly proposed for a restructuring of Yahoo board and its executive ranks and the sale of the search business to Microsoft. Microsoft can not be more shameless by backing Icahn in getting the deal done at any cost.

Icahn’s slate of directors recommended to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission obviously includes a list favorable to Microsoft and Icahn. The list would obviously speak and act what Icahnsoft orders.

The slate includes Adam Dell, managing general partner, Impact Venture Partners, Mark Cuban an entrepreneur and others. The persistent and adamant Icahn stated, “We believe that now is the time to enter into a significant transaction with Microsoft,” on a letter to Yahoo shareholders. He also stated that his current best-friend Microsoft would purchase all of Yahoo or its search business if the current board is replaced with Icahn’s own personal favorites.

The 171-year-old jewelry company Tiffany & Co lost to eBay on a suit filed by Tiffany on counterfeit auction listing on eBay. This could be a pleasant surprise for auctioneers like Amazon, Yahoo and Google.

Tiffany’s lawyer’s contacted eBay in 2003 stating that any seller who sells five or more pieces of Tiffany jewelry should be automatically deleted. eBay in turn did not consider this demand and stated that, “we are not prepared to do at this time”. This frustrated Tiffany who again approached eBay to ban all silver Tiffany jewelry. eBay again refused the request. eBay was not willing to accept this demand because it felt that considering a listing infringing just because the seller sold multiple items at the same time is not reasonable.

This long argument was finally put to an end by Judge Sullivan on Monday. He mentioned that eBay always removed listings promptly whenever Tiffany notified of any counterfeit goods. He also mentioned that eBay even delayed listings of Tiffany products by 6 to 12 hours just to do a manual check before making the products live. The judge stated, “As a factual matter, there is little support for Tiffany’s allegation that a seller listing five or more pieces of Tiffany jewelry is presumptively trafficking in counterfeit goods.”

It should be noted that eBay provides the service VeRO – Verified Rights Owner were a trademark owner can report or remove infringing listings. There are more than 14,000 companies and individual merchants participating in this program. Tiffany is one of them.

eBay spends $5 million each year on its fraud search engine identifying counterfeit listings. The search engine has 13,000 rules set to find out fraudsters through a keyword search algorithm.

Sounds like Microsoft would never give up fighting Google. Well not through technology or creative innovation, but through acquisition. Or is it that Microsoft feels loosing out a bid is degrading its name?

Microsoft Corporation, the Redmond based software giant has again renewed its discussions with Yahoo on a deal to overtake Google. This time Microsoft is not on a pursuit for full acquisition of Yahoo. In return, it’s planning on an alternative to search advertising partnership.

It should be noted that Google had a two week test with Yahoo having its ads displayed in Yahoo search results. Looks like MSN is alarmed at the two giants partnering up as Google and Yahoo alone have more than 80% internet search market covered.

Microsoft’s desperate plans to become a leader in internet search and advertising is not proving fruitful though MSN ranks as one of the leaders in internet technology. MSN has been offering bids with Yahoo in February 2008 and as a private bid in February 2007 which was not publicized.

Bill Gates, Chairman of the software giant Microsoft announced on Tuesday that the key decisions regarding companies withdrawal of the $47.5 billion bid for the search engine company Yahoo! Inc would be made by Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer.

Microsoft made a bid of $44.6 billion for Yahoo Inc. late February with the plans of having a monopoly in online advertising and internet search. However, Yahoo was not pleased with the offer and requested more. A $47.5 billion was in returned as bid by Microsoft. This again was rejected by Yahoo and finally Microsoft withdrew the bid later on Saturday.

Bill Gates made these remarks after a meeting with the South Korean President, Lee Myung-bak while he was on a short trip to South Korea.

It is reported that MSN Windows Live mail registrations have been hit by spam bots as much as 30% to 35%. This is a serious security issue for Microsoft.

The bot acquires the CAPTCHA on the MSN server, takes it back to the spammers server and is read using spam servers technologies. After successful reading, the text match is sent back to MSN registration form and the registration is done successfully.

Vice President of Security Research, Dan Hubbard stated that this is the first time that we have seen bots like this. He also mentioned that some of the account creation scan is still murky and stated that the team is yet to find out what is happening in the spammers server. He also mentioned that spammers use these addresses for a day and then dispose them. These spamming addresses are quickly shut down by MSN and get listed in spam filtering products.

This huge success rate by spammer bots has started an debate if CAPTCHA is secure. This has lead to rethink CAPTCHA potential. It should also be noted that few months back a Russian programmer stated that he was able to crack Yahoo’s CAPTCHA system 35 percent of the time.