Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

In a recently published open letter to the Yahoo! Board of Directors, Carl Icahn makes things pretty clear, he wants to dump the entire current board. He is not very happy with the way the current board acted with Microsoft’s offer of $47.5 billion and feels the $33 per share price was a “superior alternative” to what Yahoo could do on their own.

“It is clear to me that the board of directors of Yahoo has acted irrationally and lost the faith of shareholders and Microsoft.”

In a long and thorough letter he present a list of 10 members that he feels should replace the current board. The new list includes not only himself, but also Lucian A. Bebchuk, Frank J. Biondi, Jr., John H. Chapple, Mark Cuban, Adam Dell, Keith A. Meister, Edward H. Meyer, Brian S. Posner and Robert K. Shaye.

While Carl Icahn is going after this with full force, even if he were to get the newly proposed board in order, there has not been any word from the Microsoft camp as to whether or not they would come back and continue the deal.

Keep reading to check out the full letter…

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Yahoo! may have successfully deterred a Microsoft takeover, but it cannot escape the fact that it still has to work with the software maker in its other products. Barring all indifference’s with Microsoft, Yahoo has quietly made available the new Yahoo! Go 3.0 in beta mode for Windows mobile-powered handsets. And no, Yahoo did not underplay the new version of its mobile web browser to get back at Microsoft. On the contrary, it has transformed Yahoo! Go 3.0 into a powerful mobile web portal with features that even the Microsoft guys would love. These new features are; a new mobile web start up page that displays what’s new since the user’s last visit plus previews of users favorites, an improved oneSearch that now includes up-to-date flight information and content from Yahoo Answers as well as Wikipedia, enhanced design and navigation that gives users an option to use the traditional carousel or the icon display, mobile widgets from eBay, MySpace and other sites that fully support mobile widgets, and other customization features. This is suffice to say that Yahoo has transformed Go 3.0 into a more powerful mobile internet facility for mobile phone users.

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You can expect louder product announcements from Yahoo! after the Deal that Didn’t Happen. Jerry Yang and Co. want to get the word out in a hurry about new features and services to boost the stock, quench shareholder anger and convince everyone that faith in its future is justified.

Releasing the beta of SearchScan may help. Yahoo is using McAfee’s SiteAdvisor to alert users of any potential for spam, viruses or other malware. The feature appears in the upper right hand corner of your Yahoo! search results - right under the company logo - and is active by default. 

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Yesterday, the mighty (or once mighty) Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo! wrote a blog post entitled, “Ok, so now what?”.  The post was what you would think a CEO might write about his actions under the Microsoft microscope and hopes for a bright future.  One of the fun thing about blogging is the response it invites.  The response Mr. Yang got is rather interesting:

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Well after all the hype during these past three months Microsoft has withdrawn their bid for Yahoo. With the final offer coming in at $33 per share or a total of $47.5 billion, that was just not enough to match the $37 per share or $53 billion that Yahoo was requesting. Steve Ballmer was also later quoted as stating that Microsoft would not proceed with a hostile takeover because they felt Yahoo “would take steps that would make Yahoo undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.”

That is that, the deal is dead.

Read [Yahoo! News]

Saturday’s deadline passed with no deal for Microsoft and Yahoo. The two companies have been negotiating for sometime now after Microsoft expressed interest in acquiring it’s rival web portal. Now Microsoft is deciding whether to launch a hostile takeover via proxy fight or to simply drop the deal. Yahoo had no comment but Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell had this to say:

“Unless we make progress with Yahoo towards an agreement by this weekend, we will reconsider our alternatives. We will provide updates as appropriate next week, these alternatives clearly including taking an offer to the Yahoo shareholders, or to withdraw our proposal and focus on other opportunities, both organic and inorganic.”

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The web mail scene has been dominated by either Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or Windows Hotmail for quite some time now. Although there have been many other web-based email systems who have tried to enter the fray, none has been successful as of yet. So it would seem that GMX Global Mail Exchange may be up to a tough task of getting into the web mail niche.

GMX Global Mail Exchange aims to provide an alternative web mail solution for home users as well as small and medium sized enterprises. It’s your typical web based email that supports POP3, IMAP and SMTP protocols and mobile devices. GMX also allows you to create up to 10 additional emails that all forward and can be checked from your main account, which is a nice way to keep your main email address a little more private. If you notice too much junk or spam from one of your alternates simply delete it and start with a new one.

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As the ads for the drug Cymbalta say, “Depression hurts.” A new study out of the University of Bristol suggests that doing a web search for information about a certain permanent solution is not a good idea.  The search engines that were used were Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.  For each search engine, 12 searches using simple terms were performed, and the top 10 results of each search were taken for a total of 480 search results in the study.  Sadly, only 13% of the results were about suicide prevention, and the top 3 hits for each search engine were pro-suicide (the fourth was Wikipedia).  According to the researchers, it appears that safety controls by ISP’s aren’t as effective as they should be and that rather, search engine optimization is the way to go.

The 12 search terms were not given in the Reuters article, and obviously search terms make all the difference as to what results turn up.  However, since the researchers were trying to put themselves in the shoes of someone contemplating suicide, the last thing they would think about is how advanced the query is.  I could also see why they used only the four search engines and didn’t include some of the original search engines such as AltaVista, Lycos, and Excite to get some more results, because the four search engines are what people most likely use.  But of the four search engines, MSN ranked highest for suicide prevention and support sites, so to me this is saying that going with an underdog yields more responsible results.  Of course though I think everyone would agree that if you rely on the Internet for information, it’s best to go directly to a trusted health website and bypass the search engines altogether, or if you don’t know of any dedicated health websites, to get help offline the old-fashioned way.

Read [Revolution Health]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo is in talks to bring Google ads in on a trial basis.  The trial will allow Google ads to be served on up to 3% of Yahoo’s search queries.  Interesting.

Both Yahoo and Google released statements saying they are not married and they are not sure this is love.  They are just going on a date and that is it.  Stop reading into this.  That is the conversation I am sure my daughter will have with me one day.  Funny, it works here too.

Yahoo is clearly signaling investors that they are up for pissing off Microsoft.  Microsofts response has been ours seems to be the only game in town for Yahoo, though investor Legg Mason (no relation) has shored up support for Yahoo should things get ugly.

More as it happens or doesn’t happen.

Read [Wall Street Journal]

If you think that the Microsoft-Yahoo merger issue is already dead, think again as here comes Yahoo issuing yet again another statement saying that they are not opposed to Microsoft’s buyout offer. But they will definitely not accept Microsoft’s proposed $31 per-share offer.

Yahoo issued the statement as a reaction to the recently published letter from Microsoft which gave Yahoo an April 26 deadline to accept their final offer. In the said letter, Microsoft threatened to resort to hostile takeover should Yahoo continue to refuse the $31 per-share price.

And while this seems to be a back-and-forth game that is being played, Yahoo is expected to send a return letter that denies Microsoft’s claims that Yahoo’s business is falling apart.

Read [Reuters]