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#381 The Garden » Yahoo Gives Up, Turns Search Over to Bing » 899 weeks ago

Tommie
Replies: 4

Yahoo Gives Up, Turns Search Over to Bing

    * By Ryan Singel Email Author
    * July 29, 2009  |

News analysis: In its search for a second act, Yahoo has decided it is no longer a technology company.

A search and advertising deal announced Wednesday means Yahoo’s once-dominant search engine will grind to a halt for 10 years, replaced by Microsoft’s often-revamped and newly branded Bing. Yahoo gets a big slice of text ad revenue, and Microsoft buys itself into a (distant) second place in the search race, still with less than half the searches as Google.

The only real change for Yahoo’s millions of users is they’ll likely see some Bing branding and search results that might feel slightly different.

For Yahoo employees and stockholders, the announcement says something else: Yahoo is now an entertainment portal, a confederation of “destinations.” It is the new AOL, minus original content.

Forget that Yahoo was one of the first significant internet brands to come out of Silicon Valley. That it has been a leader in cool web technologies, from Hadoop to Flickr to its open search interface and its support for new web standards. That it recognized and bought smart tech companies like Flickr, Zimbra and Delicious.

By letting Microsoft take over its search engine, Yahoo has essentially announced it can’t keep up with Google and Microsoft and instead will focus on amusing users with multimedia deals and Fantasy Football leagues.

Microsoft, for its part, gets a huge bump in traffic to its revamped search engine and online text ad platform. Bing, which currently handles about 8 to 10 percent of U.S. searches, will jump to something in the neighborhood of 30 percent. And by capturing one opposing army, they dramatically simplify the battle lines and create a two-sided conflict.

Google remains the dominant force: It controls 70 percent of the search market and is a cash cow. It collected more than $5.5 billion in revenue in the last three months alone — 30 percent more than Yahoo grossed all last year — the majority from text ads laid next to search results.

By contrast, Microsoft has consistently lost millions refining and trying to monetize its search, and its efforts to catch up with Google in online advertising dollars have stagnated despite billion-dollar acquisitions. With the Yahoo deal, Microsoft is clearly hoping to steal some of the billions that Google makes — using the contractual access to Yahoo search technology (which it gets exclusively under the deal) and more importantly, from the sheer volume of traffic that flows through Yahoo every day.

The stock market punished Yahoo for the deal Wednesday, sending its stock down by nearly 12 percent as the closing bell approached. That’s a bit surprising though because in the short run, Yahoo will be able to save expenses on massive server farms and make more money in search revenues. Yahoo estimates this will add $275 million to its bottom line every year.

But perhaps, for once, Wall Street is looking long-term. Yahoo, a company with a tremendous brand, millions upon millions of loyal users and hundreds of talented — but stifled — engineers, has decided to become just a middleman between a gullible and undemanding audience and eager advertisers. It will offer Flash movies to the rubes and collect bushels full of dollars from the advertisers it funnels its customers to. There might be a future in that business model, however badly it failed for AOL and Yahoo in the last few years, but either way, it’s not a glorious one.

The deal won’t be finished until federal regulators in the States and the E.U. look over the deal, but they are unlikely to stomp on it, given Google’s monstrous market share. That means Bing will be the new Yahoo search early next year.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/07/yahoo-gives-up/
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Wow, I remember when the internet was just Yahoo and AOL.  Now look at them both.

#382 Re: GNRevolution Madness » GnREvolution T.V. Madness - Round 1, Battle 21 » 899 weeks ago

Olorin wrote:

Havnt seen any of them, null vote.

Same here.

#384 Re: Dust N' Bones & Cyborg Slunks » Slash Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter updates » 899 weeks ago

Flea is a truly phenomenal bass player, just hanging out listening to him play today.
4 hours ago · Comment · LikeUnlike · via Selective Twitter · follow @SlashHudson

#385 The Garden » Police stunned by child dismemberment » 899 weeks ago

Tommie
Replies: 4

Police stunned by child dismemberment
Texas woman accused of killing infant son, then eating child's brain
The Associated Press
updated 8:48 p.m. ET, Mon., July 27, 2009

SAN ANTONIO - The scene was so gruesome investigators could barely speak: A 3 1/2-week-old boy lay dismembered in the bedroom of a single-story house, three of his tiny toes chewed off, his face torn away, his head severed and his brains ripped out.

"At this particular scene you could have heard a pin drop," San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said Monday. "No one was speaking. It was about as somber as it could have been."

Officers called to the home early Sunday found the boy's mother, Otty Sanchez, sitting on the couch with a self-inflicted wound to her chest and her throat partially slashed, screaming "I killed my baby! I killed my baby!" police said. She told officers the devil made her do it, police said.

Sanchez, 33, apparently ate the child's brain and some other body parts before stabbing herself, McManus said.

"It's too heinous for me to describe it any further," McManus told reporters.

Sanchez is charged with capital murder in the death of her son, Scott Wesley Buccholtz-Sanchez. She was being treated Monday at a hospital, and was being held on $1 million bail.

'In and out' of psychiatric ward
The slaying occurred a week after the child's father moved out, McManus said. Otty Sanchez's sister and her sister's two children, ages 5 and 7, were in the house, but none were harmed.

Police said Sanchez did not have an attorney, and they declined to identify family members.

No one answered the door Monday at Sanchez's home, where the blinds were shut. A hopscotch pattern and red hearts were drawn on the walk leading up to the house.

Sanchez's aunt, Gloria Sanchez, said her niece had been "in and out" of a psychiatric ward but did not say where she was treated or why. She said a hospital called several months ago to check up on her.

"Otty didn't mean to do that. She was not in her right mind," a sobbing Gloria Sanchez told The Associated Press on Monday by phone. She said her family was devastated.

Investigators are looking into Sanchez's mental health history to see if there was anything "significant," and whether postpartum difficulties could have factored into the attack, McManus said.

Postpartum depression — a pattern?
Postpartum depression and psychosis have been cited as contributing factors in several other cases in Texas in recent years in which mothers killed their children.

Andrea Yates drowned her five children in her Houston-area home 2001, saying she believed Satan was inside her and trying to save them from hell. Her attorneys said she had been suffering from severe postpartum psychosis, and a jury found Yates not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006.

In 2004, Dena Schlosser killed her 10-month-old in her Plano home by slicing off the baby's arms. She was found not guilty of reason by insanity, after testifying that she killed the baby because she wanted to give her to God.

Sanchez's neighbors expressed sorrow and horror Monday at the grisly killing.

Neighbor Luis Yanez, 23, said his kids went to school with one of the small children who lived at the house. He said he often saw a woman playing outside with the children but didn't know whether it was Otty.

"Why would you do that to your baby?" said Yanez, a tire technician. "It brings chills to you. They can't defend themselves."

Allen Taylor, another neighbor, said "once she gets back in her right mind, she's going to be devastated."

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32171926/ns … nd_courts/

#386 Re: Dust N' Bones & Cyborg Slunks » Slash Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter updates » 899 weeks ago

Had to get a restraining order for a crazed stalker this morning, nice.
40 minutes ago ·
Comment · LikeUnlike · via Selective Twitter · follow @SlashHudson

#387 The Sunset Strip » Madonna's Arms » 899 weeks ago

Tommie
Replies: 13

Madonna's Gruesome Twosome
Posted Jul 27th 2009 10:00AM by TMZ Staff

After dining with boytoy Jesus Luz in London yesterday, Madonna flashed her grotesquely sexy 50-year-old appendages.
0727_madonna_arms_flynet_02.jpg

Nothing says aging gracefully
like an overly worked out pair of monstrously sculpted and bloodcurdling veiny corpse arms.
http://www.tmz.com/2009/07/27/madonnas- … e-twosome/
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This cant be real can it????

#389 Re: The Garden » The Howard Stern Thread » 899 weeks ago

One of the funniest bits they did recently. 

#390 Re: Dust N' Bones & Cyborg Slunks » Slash Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter updates » 899 weeks ago

From facebook:

I had the most over the top bday party last night, I'm in a daze, did that really happen?
Yesterday at 12:50pm · Comment · LikeUnlike · via Selective Twitter · follow @SlashHudson

Just jammed w/Aerosmith in Vegas, fuckin' cool.
8 hours ago · Comment · LikeUnlike · via Selective Twitter · follow @SlashHudson

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