microsoft

Yahoo refining search-ad bidding process

In an attempt to improve the relevance of ads attached to search results, Yahoo plans to adjust the process advertisers use to bid for placement as soon as next week.

Today, there's a minimum bid of 10 cents per keyword. Soon, though, Yahoo will move to a variable minimum price, the company said Friday. The new minimum price could be higher or lower, depending on the keyword and the quality of the individual advertiser who's bidding for it, the company said.

For example, with the new system, a minimum bid--called a reserve price--could be lower for a high-quality … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 701: Doughnut for your hate

Flickr-haters get free doughnuts. If that's what you get for hating, sign us up! Also, Gartner hates on Windows, and no one gets any doughnuts for that. Europe rejects plans to criminalize file-sharing, offering doughnuts in the form of broad exemptions for fair use, and Network Solutions gets a big, fat doughnut hole for putting ads on your subdomains. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 701

Mike Please keep doing the show.

Windows is ‘collapsing,’ Gartner analysts warn http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9916717-56.html http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1870375122;fp;;fpid;;pf;1 http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8428… Read more

L'affaire Yahoo is tres banale to Madison Ave.

Advertising executives on Madison Avenue, who have always liked to watch a good fight, are more bemused by the Yahoo-Microsoft action than concerned by which company wins.

Ad firms have a big influence on the future of Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and News Corp. by deciding on behalf of clients how much of their budgets to spend with each company, if at all. While the players are important, advertisers don't really seem to care which teams are aligned, as long as they can provide the audience, the ad space, and the return on investment for clients.

The dominant response … Read more

Google Apps: Too cheap to ignore?

I've had a few conversations with IT executives from Fortune 500 companies in the past several weeks, and I've been surprised by how often a new enterprise-software company kept getting mentioned. The company?

Google.

Google has the problem of putting finish on a lot of its products, leaving things in eternal beta, but the price point for Google Apps is forcing even the biggest of companies to seriously consider Google instead of a Microsoft Office 2007 upgrade. (Google Apps: It's not just small customers anymore.)

We may be getting to the point where Google's "cloud&… Read more

Looks like some Yahooers prefer Microsoft to AOL

D: All Things Digital's Kara Swisher has a nice insidery account of a meeting various Yahoo executives apparently had Thursday with Chief Executive Jerry Yang. The upshot: they (and various other Yahoo employees she said she spoke to) have mixed feelings about being subsumed by Microsoft but recoil at the prospect of acquiring AOL.

The employees she surveyed think Time Warner's AOL is "slow-moving, weak in technology, and saddled with a largely dispirited staff," Swisher said. (Unsurprisingly, that assessment is the polar opposite of that from AOL CEO Randy Falco, who pondered AOL's appeal to others … Read more

Analyst: Yahoo-AOL merger is a viable option

An AOL-Yahoo deal, with AOL retaining its Google search relationship, could rival Microsoft's initial $31-a-share buyout bid for Yahoo, according to Charles Di Bona, a research analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

That was one of three scenarios Di Bona laid out in a research note on Friday, and his favorite.

If Yahoo and AOL were to merge, Di Bona estimates that it could yield investors $28 a share. But that depends on AOL parent Time Warner kicking in $2 billion for its Yahoo stake and the combined entity generating a minimum of $500 million in synergies.

A better deal … Read more

Taking PCs apart--and sending them back to school

BOGOTA, Colombia--In one corner of a massive warehouse, workers pick through bins of computers, keyboards, and mice, painstakingly cleaning each part.

There's a special room where peripherals such as mice go for washing and another where they go for drying. Once the hardware is reassembled, often with a few new parts added to the mix, the first set of testing takes place, to make sure all of the hardware functions as it should.

In another area, the newly rebuilt systems get their collection of software--Windows 2000 and a several-generations-old version of Office. Then the machines go through another round … Read more

Live Maps gets a major upgrade

Microsoft's Live Maps team just dropped a huge new version of its service in addition to the traffic updates from earlier Thursday.

Live Maps now offers a wealth of new features, including exporting to GPS devices, improved 3D imagery, and one of my personal favorites, MapCruncher integration.

Microsoft is rolling out its new "version 2" 3D imagery in four cities (Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas, and Phoenix) for now, with more to come later. The rest of us will have to wait and look on in envy. 3D improvements include higher-resolution textures, rendered trees, and buildings reaching farther … Read more

The problem with Windows.

Poor Microsoft.

No, really.

OK, stop that. Stop that snickering.

OK, well, just a little snickering. Go ahead.

OK, done now?

OK.

But, look, they really have a tough job. Apparently -- and who could have predicted this? -- there's a cost to being everything to everyone. The Macalope doesn't envy them. They have a gazillion different users with a gazillion different requirements and hundreds (thousands?) of hardware manufacturers they have to get their software to satisfy those requirements on.

Suddenly the Apple method of making the whole enchilada doesn't seem so bad now does it?

So, … Read more