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Started by Thilaga, Feb 19, 2008, 10:12 PM

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dwarakesh

Yahoo signs exclusive content pact with ICC

Yahoo! India, one of the leading global internet brand, and the International Cricket Council (ICC) today announced a three-year partnership which allows Yahoo! to gain access to exclusive images, videos, interviews and player chats around all major ICC events.

For the next three years, iccevents.yahoo.com will be the online destination for all ICC tourneys, including the ICC World, Twenty20, ICC Champions Trophy and ICC Cricket World Cup.

"This partnership gives us access to never before experienced content in the online domain. We can thus addresses the needs of internet audiences with top quality coverage of major cricketing events," said Gopal Krishna, V-P and head of Audience, Emerging Markets, Yahoo!

Source: Businessstandard

nithyasubramanian

Yahoo! India R&D head quits

New Delhi : Feb 27: Search engine major Yahoo! India on Friday said its R&D unit Chief Executive Officer Sharad Sharma has decided to quit the company and Shoubick Mukherjee has been named as the company's new R&D head.

"Sharad Sharma, Yahoo! India R&D has decided to leave Yahoo! to pursue other opportunities," a Yahoo! India spokesperson told.

Muhkerjee will spearhead the R&D centre's strategic contribution to the unit that delivers global products and consumer experiences, he added.

courtesy : Zeenews.com
Thanks and Regards
- Nithya Subramanian
Kenvivo Communications
http://nithya-subramanian.blogspot.com/

dwarakesh

Yahoo created Mujahideen hacker

Search outfit Yahoo trained the media chief of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) who helped carry out the attacks in Mumbai last year.

According to the Hindustan Times Mohammed Peerbhoy has told investigators that Yahoo sponsored him to learn cyber security skills against hacking from an Italian security expert in Hyderabad two years ago.

Peerbhoy, who was working for Yahoo as a senior engineer, instead used his acquired expertise to hack Wi-Fi networks to send terror emails.

The hacker is currently locked up for allegedly sending the IM email which ordered the September 2008 serial blasts in Mumbai.

Yahoo wanted Peerbhoy to learn how to hack before learning measures to counter it. He had learnt how to hack in a six-day course, run by E2 Labs, on information security in Hyderabad in May 2007. E2 runs a School of 'Ethical Hacking'.
 
A police spokesman said that Peerbhoy already a member of the Indian Mujahideen but turned to a more active role when a blast took place at Hyderabad's Mecca mosque on May 18. "Peerbhoy visited the blast site at the mosque and got very disturbed and upset to see the damage and deaths.

After learning hacking skills, Peerbhoy volunteered his new abilities hacking unsecured wireless networks to send terror emails.  The Indian Mujahideen had learnt the hard way about using Internet cafes and instead used Peerbhoy's hacked wireless networks.

The technique was really simple and it involved driving across Mumbai in a car to detect unsecured Wi-Fi connections to send emails.

Source: itexaminer

sajiv

Yahoo engineer ID'd in murder-suicide

The man who police say killed five members of his family before turning the gun on himself in Santa Clara, Calif., on Sunday was identified Tuesday as an engineer at Yahoo, according to an Associated Press report.

Devan Kalathat, who had worked at the Internet giant since 2004 as an analytics engineer, shot his 11-year-old son, Akhil Dev; his 4-year-old daughter, Negha Dev; his brother-in-law, 35-year-old Ashok Appu Poothemkandi; his sister-in-law, 25-year-old Suchitra Sivaraman; and the couple's daughter, 11-month-old Ahana Ashok, according to the report.

Kalathat's wife is the only survivor and remains in critical condition with multiple gunshot wounds, according to the report. Police do not yet have a motive for the shootings, but said there was no reason to believe Kalathat was in danger of losing his job.

Poothemkandi arrived in the United States from India with his wife and daughter about two weeks ago to work for one year at Hewlett-Packard, police told the AP.

sajiv

In mobile, Yahoo brings more to Microsoft

Barcelona : Microsoft Corp's intended takeover of Yahoo Inc would instantly raise its profile on the burgeoning mobile Internet by adding Yahoo's range of on-the-go services to its mobile unit, until now focused on promoting its own operating system.

Yahoo has made strides in the last year to position itself for an expected explosion in Internet usage on cellphones, developing slick tools for mobile search, mail and social connections that have caught the eye of big telecoms carriers.

That strategy will likely pay off in terms of mobile advertising revenues in the medium to long term - too late to make any difference in the face of Microsoft's unsolicited $42 billion bid, rebuffed by Yahoo as too low.

Microsoft has sought to duplicate its PC strategy with a mobile phone operating system, Windows Mobile.

But the software is in only a small proportion of so-called smartphones - phones with computer-like functions - and mobile users are focusing more and more on online services they can access rather than just applications loaded on handsets.

Microsoft's MSN Mobile service, offering access to its popular instant messenger as well as search, mail and news, could benefit from Yahoo's services expertise, though its perceived strong-arm tactics could upset relationships Yahoo has built with telecoms carriers.

Microsoft signaled change in its mobile strategy at this week's Mobile World Congress fair in Barcelona by saying it was buying consumer mobile software company Danger -- just before announcing that the head of its mobile unit would quit to join Vodafone Group Plc.

"There's clearly a renewal going on at Microsoft Mobile," said Ben Wood of CCS Insight, citing Microsoft's alliance with Sony Ericsson, also announced at the fair, and a previous acquisition of voice Web search company Tellme.

Unlike other parts of Yahoo - such as PC search, e-mail or instant messaging - the addition of Yahoo's mobile activities should not result in redundant capacities at Microsoft because the mobile Web services market is so new and growing so fast.

But there is little obvious to gain from any deeper integration of the two - on the contrary, it could make Yahoo's software less easily adaptable to the specifications of handset makers or operators - currently a strength for Yahoo.

Yahoo's software for keeping up with social networks or finding local information easily on the go does fit with Windows Mobile, however, as well as with other platforms.

Source: Reuters

sajiv

More layoffs coming to Yahoo

Yahoo is rumored to be planning to announce more layoffs next week, its third round of cuts in a little more than a year, according to a report Tuesday in The New York Times.

The layoffs could affect hundreds of employees and could be announced as early as April 21 when the embattled search pioneer announces its first-quarter financial results, according to the report.

Yahoo representatives declined to comment on the report.

Yahoo, which finished last year with 13,600 employees, has undergone plenty of reorganizations and executive turmoil in the past year, as well as two major layoffs. Yahoo laid off 1,520 U.S.-based employees in December as well as 52 of 251 employees based in France earlier this year. Those layoffs followed a round in January 2008, in which an estimated 1,100 employees were laid off.

In February, Yahoo appointed Carol Bartz as the successor to Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, who under fierce financial pressure announced in November that he would step down as CEO when the company's board had selected a replacement. Bartz then announced a sweeping reorganization in February aimed at making the Internet pioneer faster, simpler, and more responsive to those who use its services.

Yahoo, which has steadily lost search market share to Google and has been particularly hard hit by the economic recession, has reportedly been in preliminary talks with Microsoft to form a search and advertising partnership.

nithyasubramanian

Yahoo to cut 5% jobs; Q1 profit in line

San Francisco, April 22: Yahoo Inc said it would cut 5% of its global workforce and reported quarterly results that showed progress towards controlling costs, sending shares higher in an after-hours relief rally.

The Internet company said economic conditions remained challenging, as revenue on Yahoo Websites from both display ads and search ads fell during the first quarter.

But the decline in revenue was offset by better cost controls, as new chief executive Carol Bartz seeks to revive Yahoo's fortunes.

"People were really looking at the profit structure of the business and for things not to be falling apart," said Kaufman Brothers analyst Jason Avilio.

Yahoo said last October it would cut about one-tenth of its workforce, or about 1,600 jobs. The company finished 2008 with roughly 13,600 employees and said it would take severance charges from the new round of layoffs during the second quarter.

The company also announced in an internal memo to employees on Tuesday that it planned to implement a mandatory shutdown of operations during the holiday week of Dec. 25, 2009 through Jan. 1, 2010.

Yahoo said its operating cash flow, excluding certain items, was $409 million in the first quarter, at the high end of the $365 million to $415 million range it forecast in January.

Yahoo shares were up 54 cents at $14.92 in after-hours trading on Tuesday. The company's stock is up roughly 9 percent from its Monday close of $13.66.

Yahoo's financial report comes as speculation has mounted that the firm has restarted discussions with software giant Microsoft Corp about an Internet search partnership, following last year's failed merger negotiations.

Bartz, who replaced Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang in the top job in January, declined to comment on anything related to Microsoft during the conference call on Tuesday.

But she reiterated her belief that search is a very valuable part of Yahoo's business.

"I'm well-versed enough in the search business at Yahoo to say it's absolutely critical to Yahoo," Bartz said in response to a question regarding whether she is now familiar enough with the business to respond to an offer for search.

In the first full quarter under Bartz's leadership, Yahoo generated revenue of $1.58 billion, down 13 percent from the year-ago period.

Excluding traffic acquisition costs (TAC), Yahoo's revenue was $1.16 billion, compared with the average analyst expectation of $1.2 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company reported a net profit in the first quarter of $118 million, or 8 cents a share -- down from $537 million, or 37 cents a share, a year earlier. Wall Street analysts, on average, had forecast earnings at 8 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

While revenues were "a bit light," Jefferies & Co. analyst Youssef Squali said in an e-mail that Yahoo's overall results, particularly on the bottom line, were not bad given the environment.

courtesy : Zeenews.com
Thanks and Regards
- Nithya Subramanian
Kenvivo Communications
http://nithya-subramanian.blogspot.com/

VelMurugan

Yahoo to cut 700 more jobs

SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo Inc said it would cut 5 per cent of its global workforce (nearly 700 jobs) and reported quarterly results that showed progress towards controlling costs, sending shares higher in an after-hours relief rally.

The Internet company said economic conditions remained challenging, as revenue on Yahoo Websites from both display ads and search ads fell during the first quarter.

But the decline in revenue was offset by better cost controls, as new Chief Executive Carol Bartz seeks to revive Yahoo's fortunes. "People were really looking at the profit structure of the business and for things not to be falling apart," said Kaufman Brothers analyst Jason Avilio.

Yahoo said last October it would cut about one-tenth of its workforce, or about 1,600 jobs. The company finished 2008 with roughly 13,600 employees and said it would take severance charges from the new round of layoffs during the second quarter.

The company also announced in an internal memo to employees on Tuesday that it planned to implement a mandatory shutdown of operations during the holiday week of December 25, 2009 through January 1, 2010.

Yahoo said its operating cash flow, excluding certain items, was $409 million in the first quarter, at the high end of the $365 million to $415 million range it forecast in January.

Yahoo shares were up 54 cents at $14.92 in after-hours trading on Tuesday. The company's stock is up roughly 9 per cent from its Monday close of $13.66.

Yahoo's financial report comes as speculation has mounted that the firm has restarted discussions with software giant Microsoft Corp about an Internet search partnership, following last year's failed merger negotiations.

Bartz, who replaced Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang in the top job in January, declined to comment on anything related to Microsoft during the conference call on Tuesday.

But she reiterated her belief that search is a very valuable part of Yahoo's business.

"I'm well-versed enough in the search business at Yahoo to say it's absolutely critical to Yahoo," Bartz said in response to a question regarding whether she is now familiar enough with the business to respond to an offer for search.

In the first full quarter under Bartz's leadership, Yahoo generated revenue of $1.58 billion, down 13 per cent from the year-ago period. Excluding traffic acquisition costs (TAC), Yahoo's revenue was $1.16 billion, compared with the average analyst expectation of $1.2 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company reported a net profit in the first quarter of $118 million, or 8 cents a share -- down from $537 million, or 37 cents a share, a year earlier. Wall Street analysts, on average, had forecast earnings at 8 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

While revenues were "a bit light," Jefferies & Co analyst Youssef Squali said in an email that Yahoo's overall results, particularly on the bottom line, were not bad given the environment.

Yahoo said that revenue from display ads on its owned and operated websites slid 13 per cent year-over-year in the first quarter, with revenue from automotive advertisers down "substantially" and spending by retail advertisers "softened" compared to the year ago period.

Revenue from search-based ads on Yahoo sites were down 3 per cent. And Yahoo said that advertisers were spending less money to bid for the individual keywords that their ads appear alongside, echoing a theme present in results last week from Google Inc, the No.1 US Internet search company.

Yahoo, like Google, stressed the importance of keeping costs in line amid the difficult economy. The new round of job cuts come about two months after Bartz announced a reorganization of Yahoo's internal management structure.

The layoffs, said Bartz, are a "natural outgrowth" of the reorganization, which will allow Yahoo to streamline its operations and eliminate duplication of efforts.

The Internet company said it would also continue to implement unspecified "non-headcount cost reductions," so it can increase its ability to make strategic investments and target hiring in its core operations

"It's crucial that management adjusts the cost structure to the new growth (or lack thereof) realities; so margin protection is paramount to Yahoo right now," said Jefferies analyst Squali. "We think there is potential outperformance on margins."

Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen told Reuters there were "still very dark clouds on the horizon" for the economy.

"I'll try to resist calling the bottom in any way," he said in a telephone interview.

Yahoo projected that sales in the current quarter would range between $1.425 billion and $1.625 billion.


Source : indiatimes

sajiv

Yahoo to slash workforce as profits drop sharply

Washington: Internet search company Yahoo Inc. announced plans to slash five percent of its workforce as it reported a first-quarter profit that fell sharply from a year earlier but still managed to beat Wall Street's forecasts.

The layoffs will affect about 675 employees, the company announced Tuesday.

Yahoo said those being affected in this latest round of cuts would be notified within the next two weeks. Last year, the company cut about 700 jobs on a net basis.

Yahoo would not say exactly what kind of jobs would be lost but CNNMoney.com quoted Carol Bartz, the company's new chief executive, as saying quite emphatically that the company's current management structure is inefficient.

The layoff announcement came as the company reported its net income fell to $118 million, or eight cents per share, down 78 percent from a year earlier. Year ago results included significant one-time gains from an investment in Chinese Internet stock Alibaba.com.

Without the gains, and excluding one-time charges in the first quarter of 2009, Yahoo said it earned 15 cents per share, down 17 percent from a year ago.

Sales for the Sunnyvale, California-based company fell 13 percent to $1.6 billion. Excluding advertising sales that Yahoo shares with partners, the company reported revenue of $1.16 billion, just missing analysts' forecasts of $1.2 billion.

"Yahoo! is not immune to the ongoing economic downturn, but careful cost management in the first quarter allowed our operating cash flow to come in near the high end of our outlook range," said Bartz.

Yahoo has been actively trimming costs under Bartz, who replaced Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang in January.

Yahoo offers scores of products, including e-mail, fantasy sports and personal ads, in addition to its search tool, but Bartz has pledged to create a leaner, stronger Yahoo that can better compete with rivals Google and Microsoft.

The company expects its cost reductions will help lift sales as soon as the second quarter, for which Yahoo is forecasting revenue between $1.425 billion and $1.625 billion.

That's much higher than analysts' expectations of $1.22 billion, and it would trump the $1.35 billion in sales from the second quarter of 2008.


sajiv

We are closing GeoCities: Yahoo!

San Francisco: Yahoo! Inc announced its plan to close its GeoCities service that provides people a free online locale for home pages.

"As part of Yahoo!'s ongoing effort to build products and services that deliver the best possible experiences for consumers and results for advertisers, we are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others," said the internet giant in an email to the news agencies.

Founded in 1994 as Beverly Hill Internet, GeoCities is a web hosting service bought by Yahoo! for about $3 billion during the dotcom boom in Silicon Valley. It provided customers with tools to build interactive websites and eventually added chat forums and other community oriented features.

OneIndia News


sajiv

Yahoo Communications Chief Departs

Brad Williams, Yahoo Inc.'s head of communications, has left the company, according to people familiar with the matter.

The move is the latest management shakeup orchestrated by Yahoo's new chief executive Carol Bartz. Mr. Williams, who had been serving as the Sunnyvale, Calif., company's senior communications executive ...

nithyasubramanian

Court reinstates Yahoo lawsuit over fake profiles

LOS ANGELES: A U.S. appeals court on Friday reinstated a breach of contract claim against Yahoo Inc by an Oregon woman who said the company failed to remove nude photos and fake profiles posted by her estranged boyfriend after promising to do so.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that Cynthia Barnes could sue Yahoo for agreeing, then failing to stop the "dangerous, cruel, and highly indecent" use of its site by the ex-boyfriend.

"Contract liability here would come not from Yahoo's publishing conduct, but from Yahoo's manifest intention to be legally obligated to do something, which happens to be removal of material from publication," the opinion said.

The appeals court remanded the case to the district court for further action on the state law claim for breach of contract but did not rule on whether the claim was viable.

The appellate decision also affirmed the lower court's dismissal of a claim for negligent undertaking.
Yahoo said in a statement that it was pleased that part of the dismissal stood, and "evaluating the opinion on the remaining claim and looking forward to swift resolution in the district court."

Barnes' attorney Thomas Rask of Kell, Alterman & Runstein LLP in Portland, Oregon, said his client sued only after repeatedly asking Yahoo to remove the profiles, then relying on a promise by a Yahoo employee that they would be taken down.

"What an (Internet service provider) has to understand is this is not the wild wild West," Rask said. "There has to be some rational logic to it. Don't promise to do something and then not do it."
'BIG IMPLICATIONS'

The ruling could have a "big implications" for Internet companies that enjoy immunity from lawsuits involving user-posted content under the Communications Decency Act (CDA), said attorney Jeff Neuburger, co-chair of the Technology, Media and Communications practice group at Proskauer Rose LLP.

Neuburger, who is not involved in the case, said the opinion would prompt him to counsel media clients with Web operations, including social networking and blogging features, to consider some safeguards.

"There are a number of practical implications that flow from this decision, including educating customer service representatives, modifying terms of use and generally making sure that anything that comes from the publisher of the site cannot be viewed as a promise," Neuberger said.

The Yahoo profiles included nude photos of Barnes and her boyfriend taken without her knowledge, her office phone number, email and address and "open solicitations" for sex, the opinion said.

"Before long, men whom Barnes did not know were peppering her office with emails, phone calls, and personal visits, all in the expectation of sex," the opinion said.

Yahoo did not respond to Barnes' requests to remove the profiles until a TV news crew did a story on her situation and called the company for comment, the ruling said.

An employee then told Barnes she would "personally walk the statements over to the division responsible for stopping unauthorized profiles and they would take care of it" -- a pledge that could be construed as a contract, the opinion said.

The profiles were not removed until more than two months later, after Barnes filed the lawsuit, the opinion said.

Yahoo said it would "hotly contest" Barnes allegations at trial, the opinion said.

The case is Barnes v. Yahoo! Inc, CV-05-00926, U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.

courtesy : ExpressBuzz.
Thanks and Regards
- Nithya Subramanian
Kenvivo Communications
http://nithya-subramanian.blogspot.com/

rajoe

Yahoo Eyes Social Networking Acquisitions

Yahoo is looking to buy companies that will allow it to become a bigger player in social networking and revamp its family of products, Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh said on Wednesday.

Yahoo has had conversations with companies about partnerships and "more interesting" possibilities, said Balogh, who is executive vice president of products at Yahoo. "I can guarantee you there will be some acquisitions, and we will do some stuff in house," said Balogh, speaking by videolink to the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York. Yahoo will introduce new products this fall that will make its network of websites easier to use and showcase the company's strategy to grow again, he said.

The company is striving to revive its fortunes as sales decline because of the recession and competition from other Internet heavyweights, including Google Inc. In January, Carol Bartz took the reins as Yahoo CEO, succeeding co-founder Jerry Yang.

source:Tech2

sajiv

Yahoo launches social news site, Buzz in India

Internet giant Yahoo on Thursday, May 21 launched social news site, Yahoo Buzz in India.

India is the second country in the world and the first International market after United States to get the product. Yahoo homepage will now feature news articles that readers have voted for. Buzz will effectively accesses the interests of the people and in turn feature the stories that are deemed relevant to the masses by the masses.

"Yahoo! Buzz is a great example of how we can combine popular stories with the wisdom of real people to determine what is most engaging and relevant to our millions of users," Yahoo! India Head of Audience Frazier Miller said in a statement.

The site in India is right now featuring stories from news publishers like NDTV, India Today Group, Times of India, Zee, A2 Media and OneIndia.

OneIndia News

sajiv

Yahoo's Bartz willing to sell search

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said Wednesday that her company continues to have talks with Microsoft on a search deal and indicated a willingness to sell.

The prerequisites, she said, are the right price, a technology she believes in, and access to the data her company needs.

"There's two parties in all this," she said in a speech at the D: All Things Digital conference here. "The other party has to have boatloads of money and the right technology."

Asked whether Microsoft and Yahoo are actively talking, Bartz said. "Yeah, a little bit."

Microsoft would appear to fit her bill on the money front, and the company plans to debut a new search technology on Thursday. However, a deal does not appear imminent.

She rejected the notion put forth by folks like the Twitter co-founders did on Tuesday by saying they would never sell. "Never is a long time."

Asked whether she would sell the whole company. "They'd have to have big boatloads of money."

She said it's not really about whether a CEO imagines selling. Executives have a responsibility to consider any offer and whether it is in the best interest of shareholders. She wouldn't say whether Yahoo lived up to its duty in evaluating Microsoft's initial offer.

"I don't know what happened last year and, frankly, I don't care," Bartz said.

Earlier in her chat, Bartz talked about the need for improving Yahoo's internal organization. However, Bartz said one thing she doesn't need is a single chief deputy.

"I don't need a No. 2 because I don't want to be removed from the business," she said.

Bartz was asked how long she is going to be at Yahoo. She noted that it's public that she has a four-year contract, but said that's just the popular term for employment deals.

"I'm going to get the job done, so it's going to be at least that long if not longer," she said.

Bartz was also asked about the now-famous "Peanut Butter Manifesto" that suggested the company was spread too thin.

"I do agree with that," she said. "Yahoo might have been a little ADD for a while."

As for Google, Bartz said it is a "fierce" competitor.

"They don't have the positioning we have," she said. "They don't have the brand we have." She noted that the company doesn't match one to one in every area, but said there are still opportunities. "The game for search in mobile is not over."

sajiv

Yahoo sues NFL players group over fantasy stats

Yahoo has filed a lawsuit against the NFL Players Association, contending that it shouldn't be forced to pay royalties for using players' names, statistics, and photos in its online fantasy football game because the information is publicly available.

The complaint (PDF), which was filed Monday in U.S. District Court for Minnesota, alleges that the players group has threatened to sue the Internet giant if it doesn't pay licensing fees for the information. Yahoo had licensing agreements with the players union for previous football seasons, but the last of those deals expired on March 1, according to the complaint.

Yahoo claims it no longer needs the union's permission to use the players' information, citing an April court decision in a similar case between the players group and CBS Interactive (the parent company of CNET). The court in that case found that CBS Interactive didn't have to pay for use of football players' names or statistics because the information was already in the public domain. The players association is currently appealing that decision.

Major League Baseball lost a similar case in 2007 to CBC Distribution and Marketing--a Missouri company that sells fantasy sports products via the Web, e-mail, regular mail, and phone. MLB's Internet media arm, later joined by the pro-baseball players' union, had claimed that CBC was using baseball players' names and statistics without a license, thereby violating the players' rights to publicity under state intellectual property laws.

CBC won at the district court level and again at the appeals court level, which held that the company's "first amendment rights in offering its fantasy baseball products supersede the players' rights of publicity."

The lawsuit asks the court to declare that Yahoo's fantasy game business does not violate any rights of publicity owned or controlled by the players group, and prevent the players group from interfering with or threatening Yahoo's fantasy game business.

As many as 15 million people participate in fantasy football leagues, generating more than $1 billion a year in revenue, according to court documents filed in that case.

Carl Francis, director of communications for the NFL Players Association, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

sajiv

Yahoo ends Bartz's first year on up note
Yahoo continued to ease its way back to financial respectability in its fourth quarter, beating estimates from both itself and Wall Street despite a decline in revenue.In a press release Tuesday, Yahoo said it took in $1.73 billion in revenue during its fourth quarter, down 4 percent from the same quarter last year but up 10 percent from the third quarter. That exceeds the high point ($1.7 billion) of the guidance range Yahoo provided after the third quarter, and revenue of $1.26 billion excluding traffic acquisition costs beat analyst estimates of $1.23 billion.
"Things seem to be returning to a more normal state in the online ad business," said CEO Carol Bartz during a conference call to discuss the company's results Tuesday. Although the totals are still off compared to last year, both search and display ad revenue on Yahoo sites increased from the third quarter to the fourth, as Yahoo's clients became more confident about their marketing budgets and more willing to spend on Yahoo's inventory, she said.
Fourth-quarter net income was $153 million despite the drop in revenue, compared to a loss of $303 million a year ago. Last year's net income number, however, was hurt by a one-time write-off of goodwill. Excluding charges, non-GAAP earnings per share actually fell, from 21 cents last year to 15 cents this year, although Wall Street was expecting just 11 cents in earnings per share this time around.
For the full 2009 fiscal year, Yahoo's first under Bartz, the company recorded $6.5 billion in revenue and net income of $598 million. Revenue was down 10 percent compared to 2008, but net income was up 43 percent.
Yahoo attempted to shed both workers and businesses that it didn't like during 2009 in order to save money, but "2010 is not about divestitures for Yahoo," Bartz said. Instead, the company is planning "acquisitions and investments to make Yahoo even stronger," she said, although she cautioned that those acquisitions will be relatively small.
Yahoo said it expects to record between $1.575 billion and $1.675 billion in revenue during its second quarter, with income from operations at $90 million to $110 million. That does not include any effects that will come into play if the Microsoft search deal is finalized, Yahoo said.
The company did not provide an update on when that deal might be finalized during the conference call. Yahoo and Microsoft are talking to the Department of Justice about the potential anticompetitive impact of the deal, which tends to happen when two large players in a three-player market propose a merger.
Bartz likewise dodged a question regarding Yahoo's plans for its business activities in China. The company is an investor in Alibaba, which runs a Chinese-language content site bearing Yahoo's brand in China. Google, of course, recently threatened to pull out of China unless it can offer an uncensored search engine, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week warned U.S. Internet companies that they have a "shared responsibility" to stand up against Internet censorship.
"We have a good relationship with them," Bartz said, even though Alibaba called Yahoo "reckless" for supporting Google's decision to speak out against cyberattacks believed to be the work of the Chinese government. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang sits on Alibaba's board of directors, she said.
As for other international topics, Bartz announced she's no longer looking for a management hire to head up Yahoo's international efforts, as had been the plan to date. Bartz said she couldn't find a candidate she liked, and so the new plan is to merge the Emerging Markets group into the other three geographical divisions: Asia-Pacific, Americas, and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). The current leaders of those groups will continue on, she said.





Kalyan

Yahoo! logins into black; posts Rs 693 crore profit in Oct-Dec


Internet giant Yahoo! has posted a profit of $153 mn (Rs 693 crore) in the quarter ended December 2009 on the back of improving advertising market.

In the year-ago period, the company had a net loss of USD 303 million, Yahoo! said in a statement.

Yahoo! posted a revenue of USD 1.73 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, down 4 per cent from a year ago. However, compared to previous quarter, revenues grew by 10 per cent.

The company's revenue from display ads, which are core to its business, jumped 26 per cent over the previous quarter. Online search ads, inched up 4 per cent - the first quarter-on-quarter increase since the third quarter of 2008.

"The fourth quarter marked a strong finish to 2009, which was a transformative year for Yahoo!," the company's chief executive officer Carol Bartz said.

"We beat the high end of our revenue guidance, saw demand for premium display advertising improve significantly, and grew Owned & Operated search advertising revenue sequentially for the first time since the third quarter of 2008."

Yahoo!, which has been facing competition from rival Google Inc. The company has reportedly lost share in the search-engine market after entering into a deal with Microsoft Corp last year, to divest some of its search-engine technology.



source: economic times

michelclarck

Yahoo cuts browser data retention to three months

Earlier this year, industry leader Google halved the amount of time it stores personal data to nine months. Microsoft has said it will cut the time to six months if its rivals did the same.

"Google first went to 18 months and started this competition," said Ari Schwartz, vice president at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group.

Yahoo's pledge "is more significant because they are getting rid of some data after 90 days and they actually have an implementation plan to get this done," he added.

The European Union has recommended that companies keep data no more than six months and urged the sector to adopt an industry-wide standard.

"This was our attempt to put a stake in the ground" on the issue, Yahoo vice president of policy and privacy chief Anne Toth said.

Internet search engines get their revenue by matching advertisements to searches, so advertisers can peg their ads to what is on the searcher's mind.


Kalyan

Yahoo will lay off 2,000 of its employees in a bid to save hundreds of millions of dollars.

"Today's actions are an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo — smaller, nimbler, more profitable and better equipped to innovate as fast as our customers and our industry require," said Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson in a statement.

"We are intensifying our efforts on our core businesses and redeploying resources to our most urgent priorities," he said.

"As part of that effort, approximately 2,000 people will be notified of job elimination or phased transition," said Yahoo.

Yahoo's layoffs come as a result of its revenue declining due to its competition with Facebook and Google.

source: one india