Technologizer

Curtain Call for GeoCities

Monday, October 26, 2009

Sometime today, the servers for what once was one of the most popular sites on the web will be shut off. As earlier announced, Yahoo will be shutting down the once very popular GeoCities web hosting service for good. The company says it will not be archiving the content, so if you have an old [...]

Yahoo Mail is Unhappy This Morning

Monday, October 26, 2009

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TechCrunch’s Leena Rao is reporting that Yahoo Mail is suffering a widespread but non-universal outage at the moment. Yup, I can’t get in to my account, but the first person I asked to check was fine. Rao also says that Yahoo Mail is the most popular Webmail service, with over 300 million users. Let’s see if [...]

The Yahoo Ad Onslaught Begins

Monday, September 28, 2009

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Yahoo plans to spend $100 million marketing itself, and it’s posted the ad that kicks off the new campaign: If you showed an alien this ad, he (she? it?) would come to the conclusion that Yahoo is a place where nobody’s old, bald, fat, or ugly–and where nobody uses computers. Whatever problems [...]

Yahoo’s New Search: Good Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

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On Monday, Yahoo unveiled significant revisions to its search engine, as detailed in this blog post. I like the new stuff–especially the embedded YouTube videos (despite owning YouTube, Google doesn’t embed it in search results) and the overall performance (as Yahoo claims, the new engine feels fast). But given Yahoo’s plans to turn its search infrastructure [...]

DOJ Investigates Microhoo

Friday, September 11, 2009

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The U.S. Department of Justice is placing the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership under greater scrutiny, according to reports. The DOJ is allegedly requesting more information about ad pricing, product plans, and search engine investments. Microsoft was prosecuted in the 1990s for abusing its monopoly position in the desktop operating system market, so it comes as no surprise [...]

The Press Releases of the Damned!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

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In the land of the press release, all news isn’t good news–it’s fantastic news. Every product is revolutionary. Each corporate merger is historic. Even layoffs are masterstrokes that will turn around troubled companies. When the stuff announced in press releases hits the real world, the results can be surprising, disappointing, and occasionally catastrophic. Yet the [...]

Yahoo Was a Search Company. The Original One.

Friday, August 7, 2009

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Do you remember the first time you searched the Web? I do. In vivid detail. It was in late October or early November of 1994, in a conference room at PC World. My friend Pete Loshin showed me a new site that he explained could find information on the Internet. I performed this query as [...]

Revealed: The Costs of Microsoft’s Yahoo Deal

Friday, July 31, 2009

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Rumor has it that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, flummoxed over press leaks, decreed that password protection be added to Office 2003. Ironically, Ballmer inadvertently detailed the transition costs of the company’s ten year search deal with Yahoo during his presentation at the Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) yesterday. A slide marked “not for disclosure” found its [...]

5Words for Thursday, July 30th 2009

Thursday, July 30, 2009

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Google: Microsoft/Yahoo partnership bad. 3Jam launches Google Voice competition. AT&T shirks Google Voice blame. Apple Time Capsule hits 2TB. The problem with digital frames. I want a Gorillamobile mount. Absurdly small 32GB USB drive.

Two Very Brief Things About the Microsoft/Yahoo Deal

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

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It won’t be a truly done deal until it gets regulatory approval, but Microsoft and Yahoo have finally agreed to a partnership which, among other things, will make Bing the search engine on Yahoo and have Yahoo selling ads on Bing. The two companies’ explanation of why this is a good idea is summed up [...]

5Words for Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

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Yahoo/Microsoft: finally, finally, finally. Does Yahoo risk becoming AOL? Windows 7 Ultimate activation cracked. Vudu service on LG TVs. Apple: Jailbreaking iPhones is daaaaaangerous. Logitech introduces seven new Webcams. New Eye-Fi card automatically geotags. Barnes and Noble’s Free Wi-Fi. Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.

Yahoo-Microsoft Deal: It’s Nearly Official. Thank Heavens.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

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Multiple reliable sources are reporting that Microsoft and Yahoo have finalized a deal to work together on search and advertising, and it’ll be announced tomorrow. It’s not the merger that Microsoft wasted an immense amount of time on last year, and it’s apparently not as sweeping an arrangement as some folks thought the company would [...]

Yahoo’s New Look: Quite Nice

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

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Yahoo is rolling out a revised version of its home page today. It represents no radical change, but it’s nice–and almost every change feels like it was made in the interest of Yahoo users. At first glance, the old home page (which you can choose to retain) and the new one don’t look much different, except [...]

Report: Microsoft Days Away from Yahoo Search Deal

Friday, July 17, 2009

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A cadre of Microsoft executives is in Silicon Valley to iron a search and online advertising deal with Yahoo, All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher is reporting. The executives include senior vice president of the company’s Online Audience Business Group Yusuf Mehdi, Online Services Group president Qi Lu, and Online Services senior vice president Satya Nadella, [...]

Yahoo Aims to Make Research Easier

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

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Yahoo is adding a new feature to its search engine that it hopes will attract researchers to its product. Called Search Pad, the offering aims it make it easier to capture and organize information culled from search results. The feature could be useful if you spend a lot of time on search engines for research [...]

Michael Jackson’s Death Seen as Attack

Friday, June 26, 2009

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Google interpreted the swell of searches inspired by the passing of entertainer Michael Jackson as a malicious attack on its Google News service, according to reports. People searching for news about the music icon after word spread about his condition were met by a cryptic message: “We’re sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests [...]