Yahoo unveils Livestand, products for tablets, other mobile devices

Yahoo, looking to compete with Google and Facebook for eyeballs and advertising dollars, held its annual product runway event on Wednesday to offer a sneak peek of upcoming products.

The struggling Internet giant is pressing forward even as it faces an uncertain future. In a prolonged financial funk, Yahoo fired its embattled chief executive, Carol Bartz, in September.

Yet its products are still some of the most popular on the Web. And, despite all the upheaval, Yahoo is following a product plan it laid out a year ago that emphasizes the growing popularity of tablets and other mobile devices to consume digital content.

Chief among Yahoo's new products is magazine software for Apple's iPad called Livestand that pulls content and video from newspapers, magazines and other publishers that appeal to users' interests. It's similar to the magazine apps from Flipboard and AOL's Editions.

Yahoo is looking to reach consumers who are increasingly accessing digital content on tablets and other mobile devices to bring in more advertising revenue.

Yahoo had hoped to roll out the app in June.

The other new products that Yahoo debuted Wednesday included an IntoNow iPad app for television viewing, Yahoo weather for Android, Yahoo mail for the iPad and some new social features.

Yahoo's chief product officer, Blake Irving, took the stage to introduce the products. He also tried to set the record straight on what Yahoo is (a subject that has bedeviled him and other Yahoo executives in the past). Irving, who joined Yahoo from Microsoft in 2010, said there is "very little confusion" about the subject now.

"What is Yahoo? Simple. It's the premier digital media company. Period. Stop," Irving said. 

Yahoo may sell its Asian assets and distribute the proceeds to shareholders rather than selling itself, people familiar with the situation told Bloomberg last week. The company may also let buyers take a minority stake in the company or buy it outright, the people said.

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Image: Livestand. Credit: Yahoo

Yahoo, still in CEO hunt, to buy Interclick for $270 million

Yahoo Inc. hasn't yet decided on a new chief executive and it hasn't yet decided what to do with itself, but the company did announce the decision to pay $270 million to take over Interclick Inc.

So why would Yahoo want to buy Interclick, a New York online advertising firm that helps advertisers find websites matching their target market and resells ad display space on websites? The Sunnyvale, Calif., company said in a statement Tuesday that the move will beef up its online advertising business, which has seen declines in recent years but still remains one of the tech industry's largest.

The purchase comes amid Yahoo's ongoing search for a new permanent CEO, after firing Carol Bartz from the post in September, and a strategic review that could result in selling the company. Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Timothy Morse has filled in as interim CEO since September.

"With Interclick, Yahoo! will acquire unique data targeting capabilities, optimization technologies and new premium supply, as well as a team experienced in selling audiences across disparate sources of pooled supply," Yahoo and Interclick said in a statement.

"This investment underscores our focus on enhancing the performance of both our guaranteed and non-guaranteed display business across Yahoo and our partner sites and, combined with Yahoo!'s reach and advertising leadership, will deliver a powerful solution for marketers."

Yahoo said it expects the deal to close in early 2012. On Tuesday, Yahoo board member David Kenny, who recently left his post as president of Akamai Technologies, a company that provides cloud services for businesses, told AdAge that he wasn't looking to be Yahoo's next CEO. Kenny remains at Akamai as a senior adviser.

"The timing is coincidence," Kenny told AdAge. "People should not draw conclusions about where I'm going next, the consumer internet is a big place."

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Photo: A Yahoo sign at the company's Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Mozilla and Microsoft launch 'Firefox with Bing' browser

Mozilla has teamed with Microsoft to bring more Bing to Firefox.

On Wednesday the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit group that builds the Firefox Web browser, released Firefox with Bing, a customized version of the browser that makes Bing.com the default homepage and sets Bing as the default search engine.

Of course, any user of Firefox can go into the browser's settings and make those changes themselves if they want, and there is even a "Bing Search for Firefox" add-on that will do the same. But many users don't mess with their settings too much, which is why Google (the usual default for Firefox) is the most widely used search engine among Firefox users.

Google competes with Bing on the search side and Google's Chrome browser competes with Firefox. Microsoft, of course, makes a Firefox rival in Internet Explorer.

Mozilla, in a blog post, said that "nearly 20 customized versions of Firefox" are available from its partners, including Bing, Yahoo (which now uses Bing to power its search as well), Twitter and Yandex.

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Image: A screen shot of Firefox with Bing's download website. Credit: Microsoft and Mozilla

Microsoft, yet again, reportedly considers buying Yahoo

Microsoft is reportedly interested, once again, in taking over Yahoo.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Microsoft was mulling over the idea of making a bid for the struggling Web company that fired its last CEO, Carol Bartz, in early September.

If Microsoft were to buy Yahoo, it's likely the company would be able to do so at a much lower price than the nearly $47 billion it reportedly offered in 2008.

Obviously, a lot can change between 2008 and 2011. Yahoo has a current market value of about $18 billion.

Yahoo stock rose 10% to close at $15.92 on Wednesday, fueled in large part by the Reuters report of Microsoft's interest. However, Reuters also reported that although Microsoft is flirting with the idea of a Yahoo takeover, it has yet to make a formal offer because of an internal split over whether buying Yahoo would be a good move.

Amid all of this, Yahoo is trying to figure out what to do with itself by way of a strategic review that could take months to complete.

It's also still looking for a new permanent CEO to replace Bartz. Until then, Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Timothy Morse has been filling in as interim CEO.

Among other options Yahoo seems to be facing: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Chairman Jack Ma said he was "very interested" in making a bid and said he's been in discussions with Yahoo and other potential buyers.

Ma hasn't named those other potential buyers. AOL has reportedly been interested in buying Yahoo, too. Yahoo co-founder and board member Jerry Yang has also reportedly been working on buying back a controlling share of the company.

Yang, Bartz's predecessor as CEO, left Yahoo's top post after the sale to Microsoft fell apart.

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Photo: Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. Credit: Kimberly White/Reuters.

Alibaba's Jack Ma says he's 'very interested' in buying Yahoo

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is "very interested" in buying Yahoo, its chairman said during an event at Stanford University on Friday.

Jack Ma said he has had discussions with Yahoo and other potential buyers. He did not identify the buyers.

"We are very interested in Yahoo because our Alibaba Group is so important to Yahoo, and Yahoo is also very important to us," Ma said when asked if he would buy the company, according to Bloomberg. "There are so many people who are interested in that, and we are also talking to them."

Ma made the remarks during a "China 2.0" conference (on innovation and investment in China) put on by the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Yahoo board members said in a memo to employees last week that their advisors had fielded inquiries from "multiple parties."

Yahoo is reviewing its options, which are chiefly selling the company or parts of it, namely its Asian assets which include a stake in Alibaba Group. The company is also looking for a permanent CEO. But sources have told the Los Angeles Times that new leadership is the least likely of the options. Yahoo's board fired Carol Bartz as chief executive earlier this month.

Ma said he's negotiating to buy the whole company but said negotiations had run into unspecified "political issues."

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment.

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YouTube founders relaunch Delicious, rebuilt from the ground up

Social bookmarking sites aren't as popular as they used to be, but YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are hoping to taste success with the relaunch of Delicious.com.

The rebooted Delicious, which rolled out Tuesday, is still focused on bookmarking and sharing among  Delicious users, but the entire website has been rebuilt from scratch.

"After acquiring the service from Yahoo in April, we realized that in order to keep innovating over the long term, the eight-year-old site needed to be rebuilt from the ground up," the team behind the new Delicious said in a blog post.

"The result is a new homepage, interface and back-end architecture designed to make Delicious easier to use. We're proud of what we built, but the process has also brought the site 'back to beta' as a work in progress. Much more work will be needed to realize our vision: keeping the essence of Delicious -- the premier social bookmarking tool -- while building upon its core functionality to create a great discovery service, too."

As to whether or not Delicious, Digg or Reddit (which has benefited from its rivals' reboots with traffic boosts) is the "premier social bookmarking tool" out there -- well, that's up for debate. But what is clear is that social bookmarking sites have declined in terms of popularity as more people share links directly via social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Digg, which focuses more on social news reading than straight-up bookmarking, is trying out yet another approach with what it calls Newsrooms that bundle links around specific topics.

The new Delicious lets users curate their own list of links that it calls Stacks, which can be centered on any topic a user chooses. Links in the new Delicious are the same as bookmarks in the old version of the site, not to confuse anybody. And sorely needed features such as the ability to add a profile picture and  tag links with multiple words have been added.

Delicious described Stacks as "playlists for the Web" in a post on a blog of its parent company, AVOS.

AVOS, of course, is Hurley and Chen's San Mateo start-up that took over Delicious from Yahoo.

Users can easily create a stack by pasting in links to any topic they want at Delicious.com, or by way of a browser button that will add the bookmarked link to the site as well.

Users can customize their stacks by choosing not only all the links that show up, but also the title of their stack, tags to help other users find their stacks in search, and a description and comment for each link as well.

Stacks are published to the public only when a user wants them to be, so research and time can be taken to build a stack before sharing, and stacks can always be edited after going live as well.

"Our goal with stacks is to add more value to all the links being collected by the Delicious community," the team said in its post. "Each new stack presents an opportunity to introduce the rest of the world to cool Web content they haven’t seen before."

Delicious did express a bit of nervousness on Tuesday, in its blog post, using a quote from Marty McFly in "Back to the Future":

"What if they say I’m no good? What if they say, 'Get outta here, kid, you got no future?' "

"We feel a bit like Marty today as we launch the new Delicious," the post said.

And the team has good reason to feel that way. Social sharing and social networking tools are only as good the people who use them. When users go away, so does the usefulness of the service. Delicious will need to lure in new users and maybe some old users who left along the way if it's to return to the significance it once had.

What do you think of the new Delicious and social bookmarking and news reading in general? How does the new Delicious stack up to the new Digg? Does the world still need services such as these when so much is shared on Facebook, Twitter and Google+?

Sound off in the comments.

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Image: A screen shot of the new Delicious.com. Credit: Delicious/AVOS

Yahoo's strategic review could last months, leaked email says

Yahoo board members sent an email to update the company's some 14,000 employees (currently toiling in limbo) on the progress they are making in their strategic review.

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and co-founders David Filo and Jerry Yang said Yahoo's advisors at Allen & Co. are fielding inquiries from "multiple parties that have already expressed interest in a number of potential options."

The process, the memo says, could take months.

Yahoo's board fired Carol Bartz as chief executive earlier this month. It is now reviewing its options, which are chiefly selling parts or all of the company.

The email said the company is also looking for a permanent CEO. But sources have told the Los Angeles Times that new leadership is the least likely of the options.

That was not reflected in much of the email, which said: "Together, we can write the next great chapter in the Yahoo! story and secure our place as one of those rarities: an internet company that endures."

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AOL in talks with Yahoo about possible merger, report says

AOL Inc. is discussing a possible deal with Yahoo Inc. to combine the two companies following the ouster of former Yahoo Chief Executive Carol Bartz, a report says.

Tim Armstrong, AOL's chief executive, is talking to Yahoo advisors from private equity firms and investment banks about possible options for a merger, Bloomberg News reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.

Armstrong had been interested in a merger with Yahoo last year, when Bartz was still CEO, but was ultimately rebuffed by the company, Bloomberg said. He is now reconsidering the possibility as a way to bolster both tech companies, the report said. One option includes Yahoo acquiring AOL, with Armstrong at the helm of the combined company as chief executive.

But Bloomberg cited one person who said Yahoo is unlikely to be interested at this time in a deal with AOL, considering the company's declining revenue and heavy losses. Yahoo's market value, at about $18.2 billion, is more than 11 times than that of AOL's at $1.6 billion.

Yahoo and AOL have been losing revenue as the Internet evolved and competitors such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. took advertising dollars away.

Yahoo, once a leader in the online advertising world, rejected a $47.5-billion takeover offer from Microsoft Corp. in 2008. Bartz was hired afterward and then abruptly fired this week after years of declining revenue growth. Internet pioneer AOL has also struggled, losing almost $800 million since it was spun off from Time Warner Inc. in 2009.

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Photo: A woman walks by AOL's corporate headquarters on Broadway in May 2009 in New York City. Credit: Mario Tama / Getty Images

Yahoo: Is ex-CEO Jerry Yang trying to buy back the company?

Is ex-CEO Jerry Yang trying to buy back Yahoo?

Well, yes, according to Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson.

"He's trying to buy it," Carlson wrote of Yang in his brief online report on the rumor, which is attributed to one unnamed "source close to the situation."

"There is a feud going on between Yang and Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock," Carlson wrote.

Yang co-founded Yahoo with David Filo in 1995 and was Yahoo's CEO before he left in 2009, when the company hired Carol Bartz as chief executive. Bartz was fired by Yahoo's board on Tuesday.

Much of the reason behind Yang's decision to leave Yahoo's CEO post has been attributed to a failed deal that would have seen Microsoft overtake Yahoo.

Yang still owns about 3.63% of Yahoo, while Filo owns about 5.8%, Carlson said in his report. The two might team up to make some changes at the company, and Yang is reportedly considering looking for more capital to buy more Yahoo stock, the Business Insider report said.

On Thursday, the recently fired Bartz called Yahoo's board a bunch of "doofuses" and Third Point LLC, a New York investment group that owns about a 5.1% share of Yahoo, called for the company's board to resign.

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Carol Bartz calls Yahoo board 'doofuses,' investor wants new board [Updated]

Yahoo's ex-CEO Carol Bartz and its third-largest outside shareholder, the investment firm Third Point, lashed out at the company's board of directors Thursday in entirely different ways.

Bartz, in an interview, called the board "doofuses," while Third Point filed a letter with the SEC calling on board members to resign. Officials at Yahoo were unavailable to comment Thursday.

In her interview with Fortune Magazine, Bartz confirmed that she was fired by phone and said that when Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock called her Tuesday to let her go, he read from a prepared statement drummed up by lawyers.

"I said, 'Roy, I think that's a script,'" Bartz told Fortune. "'Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself?'"

According to Bartz, Bostock continued reading the statement, and when he was done, Bartz told the chairman, "I thought you were classier."

Bartz told Fortune that her firing had less to do with her performance as chief executive and more to do with the board not wanting to look like "the worst board in the country" after fumbling a bid by Microsoft to take over Yahoo in 2008, which led to the ouster of Bartz's predecessor, company co-founder Jerry Yang.

"They want revenue growth ... even though they were told that we would not have revenue growth until 2012," Bartz told Fortune about the board. "Now they're trying to show that they're not the doofuses that they are."

Third Point, based in New York, said in its letter addressed to Yahoo's leadership that it manages a 5.1% stake in the company and called on Chairman Roy Bostok, and other directors, to step down and allow new board members to step in.

Although Bartz and Third Point seem to agree that the board is a problem for Yahoo, the investment firm didn't express any approval of Bartz's tenure as CEO.

"It is now widely accepted that the board made a serious misjudgment in approving the hiring of Carol Bartz as Yahoo's chief executive officer, given her inexperience in the consumer-oriented internet space," said the letter, written by Third Point's CEO Daniel Loeb. "Although we are pleased that the board has terminated Ms. Bartz's employment, we fail to understand why this decision was so long in coming given her abysmal performance over the last two and a half years."

In the letter, Loeb also criticizes Yahoo's board for ignoring problems in the company under Bartz's leadership:

While the decision to hire her alone is grounds for questioning the Board's competence, its willingness to turn a blind eye to these serious problems and inexplicably remain supportive of Ms. Bartz notwithstanding the negative impact she was having on the company is even more troubling. As recently as June 23, 2011, at the company's annual meeting, Chairman Bostock reportedly stated that the board remained "very supportive of Carol and this management team" and that they were "confident that Yahoo [was] headed in the right direction." These comments demonstrate that this board lacks the courage to urgently make the difficult decisions required by the situation today.

Bartz, although never overwhelmingly popular as Yahoo's CEO, did have success in her previous job, which she held for 14 years, as chief executive of the design software firm Autodesk. Under Bartz's leadership, Autodesk grew in revenue from $300 million to more than $1.5 billion, which Yahoo cited in 2009 as a reason to hire her.

Like Bartz, Loeb mentions the Microsoft deal that never was as another point of criticism against Yahoo's board:

"It is also now widely recognized that the board made a gross error in turning down the $31 per share Microsoft bid in 2008, which would have generated significant returns for Yahoo's shareholders," Loeb's letter said. "This mistake is all the more frustrating given Yahoo's current depressed stock price of $13.61 per share -- far below the company's intrinsic value."

Yahoo has appointed its chief financial officer, Timothy Morse, as interm CEO until it can find a permanent replacement for Bartz. Loeb said in the letter that he didn't like that either:

Mr. Morse's elevation to interim CEO makes him Yahoo's fourth CEO in four years and further demonstrates the poor corporate governance Yahoo investors have been saddled with for too long.... Against this background, it is evident that merely replacing the company's CEO -- yet again –- will not be enough to alter the direction of the company. Instead, a reconstituted board with new directors who will bring fresh eyes, relevant industry expertise and increased investor alignment to the table is immediately necessary.

[Updated 5:04 p.m.: A Yahoo spokeswoman emailed along this response from the company's board of directors in response to the criticism levied by both Bartz and Third Point's Loeb:

The Yahoo! Board recognizes the critical challenges facing the company and appreciates constructive input from all shareholders. Accordingly, the Yahoo! Board welcomes a dialog about the concerns that have been raised by the Third Point filing. The Board is committed to acting in the best interests of shareholders.]

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Photo: Yahoo's then-CEO Carol Bartz speaks at the American Assn. of Advertising Agencies' annual Media and Leadership Conference in San Francisco on March 1, 2010. Credit: Robert Galbraith / Reuters