Yahoo throws down data gauntlet

Search engine Yahoo is to cut the time it stores personal data from 13 months to three. It is hoping its decision will provide a benchmark for industry. Currently Google stores data for nine months and Microsoft for six months. International data protection officials have been urging firms to do more to protect the data of users. Privacy advocates have welcomed the move and challenged rivals to go even further. "I would challenge industry to move to 30 days across the board. People should demand that their information is expunged as rapidly as possible," said Simon Davies, head of Privacy International. A recent rash of data leaks has left users concerned and organisations embarrassed, he said. "The less time data is online means less risk that rogue companies can establish dangerously comprehensive profiles on users," he added. Yahoo said its decision to cut the time it stores information gathered from web surfing came about following a "review of its data practices". "This policy represents Yahoo's assessment of the minimum amount of time we need to retain data to respond to the needs of our business while deepening our trusted relationship with users," said Anne Toth, Yahoo's head of privacy. As well as anonymising user log data, the policy will also apply to page views, page clicks and ad views and clicks. But the search giant has reserved the right to keep data for up to six months if fraud or system security are involved. Privacy campaigners have argued that firms are currently keeping data unnecessarily. Mr Davies is sceptical about what he described as "mixed messages" from industry. "Only last year, firms were saying that they couldn't go below 15 months but the logic of what Yahoo has done suggests there is no reason why they can't go even lower," he said.

Google shares close at $291, Yahoo just above $10

In a bad day for publicly traded tech companies, Google's stock shares closed at $291 on Wednesday, marking the first time since 2005 that the Mountain View, Calif., dot-com's stock price has slipped below the $300 mark. The $291 is a 6.57 percent drop for the stock. A parade of negative reports and estimates about ad spending in 2009 have led Wall Street analysts to cut their earnings estimates for Google, which can credit its explosive market valuation to its pioneering search-advertising technology. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney characterized expectations for the fourth quarter of 2008 as "the weakest they have ever experienced," trimming his estimates for Google's earnings by 3 percent. Also weighing on Google is the report that cell phone giant Verizon may be close to ditching Google as its default mobile-search provider in favor of Microsoft. It was just more than a year ago, on November 1, 2007, that Google's stock price climbed above $700 for the first time, reaching a high of $741 later that month and leading some analysts and bloggers to speculate that it could hit $1,000 in due time. But by mid-January, the once-unsinkable stock had fallen below $600 and has not yet recovered. Meanwhile, fellow Valley stalwart Yahoo is in danger of seeing its stock price dip below $10 for the first time since 2003, when the industry was still recovering from the aftermath of the tech bubble pop. Yahoo's stock closed at $10.34, with a low point of $10.02. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings recently revealed that the company has a $73 million bill resulting from failed negotiations with Microsoft over its acquisition bid, corporate raider Carl Icahn over his board takeover, and Google over a proposed search-ad deal. The Google-Yahoo search deal dissolved at Google's behest, when antitrust regulators threatened legal action, and the company said "pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships, with valued partners." A jilted Yahoo publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the decision. Microsoft had offered to buy Yahoo in a deal that ultimately would have valued the company at $33 per share. Yahoo rebuffed the offer, and, according to some, it may very well regret doing so now.

Argentine judge: Google, Yahoo must censor searches

If an Argentine sports fan tried searching Yahoo Argentina for one of his country's most beloved athletes--soccer star Diego Maradona--these days, he'd be out of luck. Both Yahoo and Google are locked in a legal battle with dozens of fashion models and other public figures like Maradona over whether the Internet companies should have to censor search results relating to those persons' names. The result so far: since last year, Internet users have been left with abbreviated search results from Yahoo Argentina and Google Argentina, as a result of temporary restraining orders handed down by Argentine judges. The restraining orders against Google and Yahoo mean the search companies must censor search results from their Argentine sites for information about the plaintiffs, such as their names. The court orders do not apply to the U.S. sites Google.com and Yahoo.com. The move effectively holds the search companies responsible for content on other Web sites, a legal maneuver that would not be possible in the United States or the European Union, according to a Google representative. In the United States, federal law generally says that search engines are not responsible for the content of pages they index. Google first received an injunction to block references to the individuals on its Argentina search engine in mid-2007, after refusing to do so voluntarily, said Alberto Arebalos, Google's director of Latin America global communications and public affairs. A group of about 70 fashion models, represented by the same lawyer, initially asked the Internet company to block all search results with their names with the intent of blocking pornographic sites that used the models' pictures. Google responded that it would only block specific problematic links, provided it could notify users, Arebalos said. The matter was taken to court, and judges in Argentina have so far sided with the models. Other public figures--including Maradona and Judge María Servini de Cubría--have in recent months sought out the same lawyer to successfully block search results about them on Google and Yahoo as well. The move amounts to a class action suit against the Internet companies, although there's technically no such thing as a class action suit in Argentina. The lawyer representing all the plaintiffs, Martin Leguizamon Peña, has sought damages between 100,000 and 400,000 pesos for his clients (about $30,000 to more than $121,000). Both Google and Yahoo have unsuccessfully appealed the restraining orders and are now complying with them while the underlying lawsuits filed by Peña's clients are pending. Peña probably "thought we'd make a deal out of court, but we don't want to do that because it's not a good deal," Arebalos said. "We will fight because we think this is a good fight." Multiple restraining orders have been filed for some individuals. In some cases, the restraining orders require the search engines to censor results for certain keywords or URLs. In other instances, however, they call for broad restrictions such as censorship of "scandalous material." Such broad restraining orders compelled Yahoo to remove all search results for certain plaintiffs such as Maradona, the soccer star. A search for "Diego Maradona" on Yahoo Argentina brings up only news results and a notification that--translated from the Spanish--reads, "On the occasion of a court order sought by private parties, we have been forced to temporarily remove some or all of the search results relating to it."

Yahoo Japan, eBay unite in online auctions

TOKYO - Yahoo Japan Corp. and eBay Inc. agreed Tuesday to team up in online auctions, planning services for next year that will make it easier for consumers to buy things over the Internet from the U.S. and Japan. The move marks a return to Japan of eBay, which pulled out of the market in 2002, never able to compete against the domination of Yahoo here. Yahoo said by March, Japanese will be able to bid for items up for sale on eBay through the Yahoo auction site in Japan. By the middle of next year, similarly, a site will be set up that will allow Americans to buy Yahoo Japan auction items through the eBay site.

Tech News : New Stuff At My Yahoo

The big guys are really starting to focus on personalized home pages, where Yahoo dominates and Google is coming on strong (by adding a link from the Google.com home page). Google says their personalized home page has been their fastest growing product over the last few fiscal quarters. Pageflakes and Netvibes are two notable startups in this space.

Tonight Yahoo is announcing a few enhancements to the recently relaunched My Yahoo: a new calendar module, a My Netflix module that uses the Netflix API and an update to the Yahoo Bookmarks module.

The calendar module has read/write functionality (as it should). My Netflix lets users see what movies have recently been released on DVD, the movies in your queue and movies you have at home. The main addition to the bookmarks module is the ability to add new bookmarks directly from the module.

The new features will be rolled out on Thursday. Screen shots are below. The first one shows the calendar and netflix modules.

AOL One Step Behind Again: New Home Page Identical To Yahoo

AOL has started beta testing a new home page (the main AOL.com portal). AOL Senior Product Manager (and occasional TechCrunch contributor) Frank Gruber introduced it on his personal blog earlier today, although he is not the product manager for the product.

Nice portal…but it is nearly identical to Yahoo home page, which was redesigned last year. Click on the image above for a larger view. Internally, I’m hearing AOLers refer to the new portal as “the Yahoo Portal” although its official name is AOL 3.0.

Internet companies like to copy things from their competitors that work, but as we’ve seen even the largest companies sometimes get caught copying a little too much.

AOL says they are building best of breed products, not simply copying things from Google, Yahoo and others that are proven to work and porting them to its less cutting-edge audience. In the past year, though, we’ve seen them largely copy digg and then release a new mail product that would have been awesome two years ago but which stacks up poorly to the current versions of Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

David Liu, Senior Vice President of Portals & Personal Media at AOL, has told me that a number of new products in development are going to be impressive. I’ve seen early demos and wireframes of some of them, and I think he’s right. The company needs a category killer to get some street cred

Yahoo, Gracenote launch lyrics service

Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) and digital media company Gracenote launched an online lyrics service on Tuesday, the first industry-backed effort in a market dominated by unauthorized, rogue Web sites.

Song lyrics are among the top searches performed on the Web, but consumers have largely relied on unlicensed sources that often provide inaccurate and incomplete lyrics and do not compensate composers for their work.

"Finally, a free, legal and definitive way to settle a bet with the guy sitting next to you at the bar who is certain the Ramones' most famous anthem declares, 'I wanna piece of bacon,"' said Ian Rogers, general manager of Yahoo! Music, which will offer lyrics to hundreds of thousands of songs.

The Yahoo deal follows an agreement last summer between music publishers and Gracenote, giving Gracenote the rights to lyrics from the North American catalogs of Bertelsmann AG's BMG Music Publishing, Vivendi's Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, jointly owned by Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news). and Michael Jackson, peermusic and other publishers.

Terms of the Yahoo deal were not disclosed but officials said it was a variable revenue-sharing agreement based on advertising.

Gracenote Chief Executive Craig Palmer said licensing lyrics should boost worldwide music publishing revenues, estimated at about $4 billion annually, with the words to songs ultimately providing as much as $100 million in annual revenues in about 10 years as the market expands with new opportunities like online subscriptions, downloads and automotive distribution deals.

The deal caps months of discussions between Yahoo and Gracenote, which said it was also talking with various other music partners, like Apple Inc.'s iTunes.

Yahoo expanding its online music section

Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) is expanding its online music section to include the lyrics of 400,000 songs, hoping to strike a chord with Web surfers looking for a more reliable alternative to Internet sites that publish the words without the permission of the copyright owners.

The Sunnyvale-based company is touting the free service to be unveiled Tuesday as the Web's largest legally licensed database of lyrics.

"It fills a huge, gaping hole out there," said Ian Rogers, general manager of Yahoo music.

Song lyrics have been available through scores of other Web sites for years, but most of those destinations are technically breaking the law by posting the words without the approval of the publishers and writers that own the rights.

What's more, many of these unauthorized lyric sites rely on contributions from outsiders, a communal approach that increases the chances for inaccuracies.

Yahoo's song lyrics, in contrast, are supposed to be the official versions. Under the licensing agreement, Yahoo will share with copyright holders the revenue from the ads that will be displayed alongside the lyrics.

The database and licensing deals were cobbled together over the past two years by Gracenote, a digital media management specialist. The Emeryville-based company, formerly known as CDDB, is best known for developing technology that automatically recognizes the tracks on compact discs — a feature that is included in Apple Inc.'s widely used iTunes software.

The 400,000 song lyrics included in Yahoo's database span about 9,000 different artists, ranging from old standbys such as The Beatles and Bob Dylan to more recent stars like Radiohead and Beyonce.

Nearly 100 music publishers are contributing song lyrics, including industry heavyweights BMG Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group and Warner/Chappell Music.

Other lyrics sites boast that they have even more songs than Yahoo's database.

But Yahoo believes its lyrics library is destined to become a hit because it won't be bogged down with the pop-up ads and other intrusive "spyware" that clutters many of the sites that share lyrics without permission.

"Those sites generally aren't healthy places for your computer to be," said music analyst Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media.

Leigh trumpeted Yahoo's lyric database as a "long overdue" breakthrough that will boost the music industry by creating a new revenue stream for artists and song publishers by making it easier for people to identify a tune they might hear on the radio or on the Web.

Yahoo disappointing 1Q drags down stock

Investors were falling in love with Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) again until the Internet icon's disheartening first-quarter results ruined the mood.

With both its profit and revenue missing analyst estimates for the first three months of the year, Yahoo left Wall Street wondering how much longer it will take the Sunnyvale-based company to regain its financial momentum after stumbling through much of 2006.

Reflecting hopes for a more rapid comeback, Yahoo's stock price had surged by 26 percent so far this year heading into Tuesday's earnings announcement.

But the optimism quickly faded after Yahoo revealed its first-quarter profit had fallen by 11 percent to $142.4 million, or 10 cents per share. That compared with net income of $159.9 million, or 11 cents per share, at the same last year.

The results were a penny below the average earnings estimate among analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

The letdown zapped Yahoo's stock, which plummeted $2.53, or 7.9 percent, in after-hours trading Tuesday. Before the disappointing news, Yahoo shares had gained 48 cents earlier in the day to close at $32.09 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Yahoo expands newspaper partnership

Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) is greatly expanding its relationship with the newspaper industry, announcing the addition Monday of four new publishing companies to a consortium that works with the Internet company to sell advertising online.

Yahoo is also broadening the scope of the venture beyond its initial phase of selling help-wanted ads. It will now integrate Yahoo's search technology across the sites of the more than 264 newspapers now in the group, which covers 44 states.

Yahoo and the publishers also agreed to share local news stories from the newspapers across Yahoo's large news network and to sell local advertising online and to use Yahoo's graphical advertising technology on newspaper sites.

The original partnership, which was announced in November, was focused on selling job-search advertising online and in print, combining the large sales forces of local newspapers with the national reach of Yahoo's HotJobs online job-search service. Specific financial terms weren't disclosed.

Since that time, four other newspaper publishers have also joined, including McClatchy Co., the third-largest newspaper company in the country by circulation; Media General Inc.; Morris Communications Company LLC; and Paddock Publications Inc.

In late March, McClatchy announced a separate deal with Yahoo to allow news stories and certain online-only material produced by four of McClatchy's eight foreign bureaus to appear on Yahoo. The companies said they would share revenues but did not provide further financial details.

The growing consortium of newspapers working together with Yahoo on advertising widens a division in the industry between those papers and Gannett Co. and Tribune Co., the No. 1 and No. 2 publishers by circulation. Tribune and Gannett have been working to form a separate national network for selling advertising online.

Seeking ways to build up their online advertising revenues is a critical imperative for newspaper companies as readers and advertisers continue to migrate to the Internet. Many newspapers have reported growing revenues from online advertising, but print advertising, which is still the vast majority of their business, has been slumping.

Yahoo’s Alpha Offers Customized Search Results

I received an interesting email from our Yahoo friends in Australia. It appears that, as a result of a Hack Day project, they’ve created a customized search engine that allows you to select your own content options and offers a nifty interface.

It’s currently pulling results from Yahoo!7 (their Australian unit) and the customization is a little limited, but it has the potential to be Yahoo’s answer to Google Co-op.