Court docs: Yahoo was averse to Google deal
Yahoo execs opposed the idea of a search-advertising partnership with Google as recently as the day before Microsoft made its acquisition offer, according to court papers made public today. In a Q&A prepared for a Jan. 30 internal meeting, Yahoo asserted that such a deal “may not take into account the longer term impact on the competitive market if search becomes an effective monopoly,” the court documents say.
That tidbit — and particularly the reference to the competitive impact — may provide fodder for Microsoft in its attempt to thwart the potential search-advertising partnership between Google and Yahoo. They started discussing such a deal as a means of fending off Microsoft’s bid.
View Full Article: Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog
Google upgrades Web site search service for businesses
Google Inc. on Tuesday is announcing a series of improvements to its midrange custom search service for Web sites, as well as renaming the offering.
Launched last July as Google’s Custom Search Business Edition, the fee-based hosted service lets Web sites incorporate a Google search field for visitors to use in looking for content.
One change to the service, which is being renamed Google Site Search, is that webmasters now can submit site maps to ensure that Web pages that might be otherwise overlooked by the Google.com crawler are included, said Nitin Mangtani, Google’s lead product manager for enterprise search.
View Full Article: Computerworld
Google refutes Android device delay, cites T-Mobile plans
Disputing rumors that the first Android-enabled phone won’t ship until 2009, a Google spokesperson today pointed BetaNews to “public statements” made by T-Mobile as corroboration.
Can Adobe out-code Microsoft, Google?
With the arrival of its online office product, Adobe Systems is putting Microsoft and Google on notice that viable alternatives do exist to the industry’s reigning hegemons. What sort of impact the new products will have obviously won’t be known for months. But the release is intriguing a lot of people who have weighed into the blogosphere conversation today.
This nifty-looking application suite allows users to create word processing documents, share files, convert PDFs, and hold Web conferences. Adobe also took the wraps off Acrobat 9, which includes support for Flash. You can test out the office suite with the beta of Acrobat.com that became available today.
View Full Article: CNET News
Android will be 100% open source, says Google
Ed Burnette: Contrary to some reports, everything that makes Android “Android”, including all the core platform components and libraries needed to port Android to new devices will be open sourced under commonly used, industry standard licenses, says Google.
I confirmed with three different Google employees at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco that the core Android platform will be 100% open source. Even multimedia codecs, which historically are held close to the vest will be open. Except where noted, everything will use the Apache software license (ASL v2). This is the same open source license used by projects like the Apache HTTP server, Tomcat, Harmony, and many other large projects in the open source community.
View Full Article: ZDNet Blogs
Minnesota private community says no to Google Street View
In the latest example of “opt-out” in action, an entire Minnesota town demanded that Google take down Street View imagery of its municipality, and the search giant duly complied.
Gigya launches beta of Socialize, more social sharing
Joining the ranks of heavyweights Google, Facebook, and MySpace, social widget startup Gigya has opened the beta of its social sharing platform Gigya Socialize.
Google updates Web address iconography
Overnight, Google got a new face on the Web–one measuring 16×16 pixels.
The search giant updated its favicon, the eensy little 256-pixel logo that appears in browser locations such as bookmarks, URL location bar, and window tabs. The old icon, a capital G in a black box, has been supplanted by a cuddlier-looking blue lower-case g.
(Image Credit: CNET News Blogs)
View Full Article: CNET News Blogs
