Yahoo! is now the latest tech company to disclose the number of government requests for data it has received over the past 18 months, prompted by the fallout from the NSA spying scandal.
In a statement co-signed by CEO Marissa Mayer and Yahoo! general counsel Ron Bell, the company said that Yahoo! received 12,000 to 13,000 requests from FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) and U.S. law… → Read More
Yahoo is offering to purchase social email startup Xobni for $30 million to $40 million, according to AllThingsD’s sources. If the deal goes through, Xobni would be the latest acquisition by Yahoo as CEO Marissa Meyer seeks to boost the company’s talent roster and product offerings. → Read More
Thought Yahoo’s acquisition spree would culminate with its $1.1 billion Tumblr purchase? Well, not so much. In fact, the buy-happy company just quietly made its second acquisition in 24 hours — in two completely different verticals, no less. Yes, Yahoo followed this morning’s purchase of iOS photo app maker, GhostBird Software, by making a play into the enterprise conference calling space. Wait… → Read More
Yahoo has just quietly announced that they’ve acquired GhostBird Software, the creators of advanced iOS photography apps, KitCam and PhotoForge2.
Though details of the deal are still underwraps, Yahoo is explicitly saying that they acquired GhostBird for the sake of advancing Flickr. → Read More
PRISM is real. Even the U.S. government now acknowledges its existence. The question that remains unanswered, though, is how involved Google, Apple, Yahoo, AOL, Paltalk and Facebook were. These companies are all named as “providers” on the original slides, including the dates the NSA started collecting data from them. The reporter with the most direct access to these documents, Glenn Greenwald… → Read More
Yahoo has tweaked its search results page today (yes, it still does search, albeit now powered by Microsoft’s Bing), with a visual refresh that’s meant to better emphasize top search results and that clears up some visual clutter in the navigation bar and additional settings sidebar. Yahoo’s redesign may look familiar, because it’s quite similar to the one that Google introduced a couple of years… → Read More
Starting the week of June 3rd, tomorrow, Yahoo is discontinuing Mail Classic. It’s requiring all Mail users to switch to the new version and accept a TOS/Privacy Policy update that lets it scan emails to “deliver product features, relevant advertising, and abuse protection”. You can opt out of the ads, but if you don’t want to be scanned, you have to ditch Yahoo Mail. → Read More
A month after Tumblr introduced sponsored posts into its native mobile applications, the company is today bringing those same brand advertisements to its web dashboard. Launch partners for these new “Sponsored Web Posts,” as they’re called, include Viacom, Ford Motor Company, Universal Pictures, Capital One, AT&T, Denny’s and Purina.
Tumblr users will be able to reblog, like, follow and… → Read More
Today, I have to say goodbye to my current home, TechCrunch. I’ve not only gotten the opportunity to work with this amazing team as a writer and Community Director, but I’ve been able to enjoy it as a reader since June 11th, 2005. I’ll continue to be a reader. → Read More
Amazon has reportedly submitted plans for a new futuristic headquarters in Seattle that couples a skyscraper and an accompanying tri-sphere bio-dome like structure. According to the plans, the structure will be able to hold various forms of plant life and become a place where employees can “work and socialize in a more natural, park-like setting.”
Because God forbid employees walk to the park… → Read More
Tumblr Literary Community Organizer” Rachel Fershleiser has family who read TechCrunch. And Tumblr founder David Karp think it’s the “greatest thing.” → Read More
The bookend to Yahoo’s Big News Day — a major refresh of its photo sharing site Flickr — will see the company drop is Flickr Pro pricing tiers as part of a bid to compete better with Facebook/Instagram and the rest of the crowded market in the online photo space. But it is not getting rid of paid tiers altogether: it’s keeping an ad-free tier, called Ad Free, as well as a tier for power users… → Read More
It’s easy to forget that Yahoo has had a long on-again-off-again love affair with online video. Remember Broadcast.com, which kicked off the Mark Cuban Era? But you might not remember that, because other online video platforms long ago left Yahoo in the proverbial dust. Today, as Yahoo streamed its Flickr product and Tumblr acquisition announcements, we were given a demonstration of why Yahoo has… → Read More
Yahoo’s Flickr photo-sharing service is now offering one full terabyte for users, enough storage space to hold whole swathes of the world’s photos. The service is offering this benefit in addition to its full resolution photo storage service. While the average user will probably not touch the outer limits of this storage space in a lifetime, this alone is probably enough to draw… → Read More
The new Flickr is live.
Smack-dab in the middle of Yahoo-Tumblr acquisition day, Yahoo is holding a major press event here in NYC. But announcements coming out of this event aren’t related to Tumblr as much as Flickr, the photo-sharing database and social network acquired by Yahoo in March of 2005 for $35 million.
Today, Flickr gets a huge revamp including a totally new look and feel… → Read More
Today has been quite a roller coaster ride for Yahoo — the company put days of reports and rumors to rest this morning when it confirmed that it would acquire the social blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion, and now CEO Marissa Mayer has confirmed that Yahoo’s New York employees will now be moving.
They’ll all soon be working right around the corner from Times Square in the same building… → Read More
How much of Tumblr is porn, and what is Yahoo going to do about it? On the latter, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer spoke to its plans for addressing content that is not “brand safe” earlier this morning on a call about its $1.1 billion acquisition of the site, saying that Yahoo will need to have “good tools for retargeting,” and will “monetize in a way that is… → Read More
After announcing its deal to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion, mostly in cash, Yahoo today started to lay out some of the details for how it intends to make use of the property while trying to stick to its promise “not to screw it up.” Expect more advertising by next year as well as more Tumblr content on Yahoo properties, but more of a cautious step as to how Yahoo will deal with some of Tumblr’s… → Read More
In what can only be called an exodus, WordPress’ co-founder Matt Mullenweg posted on his blog Sunday night that over 72,000 new blog posts were imported within a single hour. This is a massive spike considering that WordPress usually just sees 400 to 600 imported posts on most Sundays. It’s a tiny percentage of Tumblr’s 50.9B posts but it’s an important consideration that Tumblr – and now Yahoo… → Read More
Yahoo has now officially confirmed that it is buying blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion mostly in cash, after reports on an impending deal first surfaced last week. It says it will keep it as an independent company, with founder David Karp at the helm as CEO. “The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and… → Read More
The Wall Street Journal is now reporting via Twitter that the rumored $1.1 billion cash acquisition deal for social blogging site Tumblr has been approved by Yahoo’s board of directors. The Tumblr acquisition was rumored last week, with a price tag reportedly north of $1 billion, which appears to be accurate if the WSJ’s sources are correct. → Read More
We’ve all by now heard about how Yahoo is trying to get some “cool” with a supposed $1 billion purchase of hip blogging platform Tumblr, but it may be a moot point if Tumblr’s users fail to stick around post-sale. → Read More
Sources close to acquisition talks between Yahoo and Tumblr say the blogging platform feels that Yahoo’s $1.1 billion offer is “too low” and views it as “only a first offer.” Yahoo may have to significantly increase the offer to close the deal. An acquisition by some tech giant is likely in the cards for Tumblr, though, as sources say the company only has a couple of months of cash runway left. → Read More
On Monday, it seems that we may get a better sense of what Yahoo plans to build in the wake of its acquisition spree, as CNBC is reporting that the company will be holding a “product-related” news event on Monday in New York City. Marissa Mayer will reportedly be speaking at the press conference, but that’s all we know about the contents of the event at this point. → Read More
The first rule of being cool is not telling people you want to be cool. Yahoo is not following this rule, with its M&A team in full pray-and-spray acquisition mode post-Marissa Mayer hire, hitting on everything that walks, or at least has traction.
Deals I have heard rumors Yahoo was trying to get into over the past couple of months: Foursquare (at an $800 million asking price). Path (at a… → Read More
Yahoo and Twitter have partnered to bring tweets directly into Yahoo homepage’s newsfeed on web and mobile, the company announced this morning. The move follows the February relaunch of the front page. At the time, the company debuted a redesigned site with an increased emphasis on personalization, as well as a more modern design. → Read More
Yahoo has been gobbling up startups. In the last week or so, it has announced the acquisition of Astrid, GoPollGo, and Milewise. In fact, in a tweet today, Yahoo said that it has “added 22 entrepreneurs to our growing mobile team,” thanks to the three aforementioned companies — plus a mobile gaming startup called Loki Studios.
I’ve reached out to both Yahoo and Loki Studios for details about… → Read More
Yahoo has just acquired frequent flier search startup MileWise, whose team will move to New York to join the recently acquired Stamped team on Yahoo’s mobile squad. I hear MileWise’s investors made a small return, and MileWise’s entire five-person team is joining Yahoo. The startup has shut down its flight search. → Read More
What is Yahoo? Marissa Mayer just laid out the company’s identity and future at Wired Business Conference. The key words she repeated over and over was “Every Day”. That’s when Yahoo wants you to use it, and it’s why it’s now developing for Google Glass, acquiring apps like Astrid, and relaunching products like Yahoo Weather she’s sees as part of your “daily dozen” activities on mobile. → Read More
“Happier, healthier, more productive.” That was the goal of mobile app Astrid, and now Yahoo is taking up the mission as it’s just acquired the social productivity platform. Co-founded by a former Palantir engineer, Tim Su, AngelPad-backed Astrid says that it has four million users, who as of September 2012 logged 30 million plans on the platform. → Read More
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