Yahoo reared its patent troll head this week, and it’s not just Facebook that has reason to be worried — at least, judging by the extremely broad features that it’s being targeted for. Yahoo could easily sue Twitter, Pinterest, Google and many other popular web services whenever it thinks it would be most lucrative since their products are also covered by Yahoo’s patents.
Rather than give you the jargon-filled abstracts of the patents Yahoo is suing Facebook with, let’s look at what features they pertain to on Facebook and across the web. → Read More
The lawsuit filed on Monday by Yahoo against Facebook over alleged infringements of certain “method” patents was a high profile step for Yahoo to take in the lead-up to Facebook’s IPO.
But although Facebook has seen patent suits against it double in the last year, don’t necessarily take this as a sign that Yahoo will necessarily extend its fight to more jurisdictions, nor that social media will be come the next battleground, after mobile, in patent wars, says one senior patent lawyer in London. → Read More
When news broke this week that Yahoo is accusing Facebook of violating as many as 20 of its patents, it took some people by surprise — but at least one patent expert saw it all coming from a mile away. Erin-Michael Gill first publicly predicted a Yahoo/Facebook patent battle back in November 2011, so TechCrunch TV reached out to Gill to get his insights on the situation, now that things have finally started to come to a head. → Read More
Yahoo’s management of Flickr has been something of a mystery. The photo-hosting service, once far and away the frontrunner and choice of pros and casual shooters alike, has seen few improvements in recent years — an eternity in the fast-moving online photography space. Many (including myself) cling to the service out of a kind of inertia, but it’s hard not to be jealous of the whiz-bang layouts and features of newer sites and services like 500px and Instagram. Even communities like Google+ and Pinterest are making Flickr users second-guess themselves.
It looks as though Flickr is finally getting the makeover it has deserved for years, though: launching on the 28th is a whole new layout and upload style, with an emphasis on community and consumption. → Read More
Tsavo Media, which operates a network of roughly 300 websites and blogs as an indirect subsidiary of Canadian online publishing and advertising company Cyberplex, is being retroactively charged $4.8 million “over a reasonable time period” by Yahoo for sending the latter company’s advertisers “low quality traffic” in 2011.
To boot, Cyberplex president Ted Hastings (formerly Tsavo Media’s CEO), apparently jumped ship. → Read More
Yahoo is moving forward with a “mobile first” mindset, the company stated via blog post late last week, then incongruously announced it would be shuttering 10 of its mobile applications. The list, which contains a mix of iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps, includes an odd, and somewhat surprising group of underperforming properties. Yahoo Deals, News, Shopping, Finance and Movies, were included among the shutdowns, for example.
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Everyone’s favorite puppet cowboy, Tom Hanks, is working with Playtone and Reliance Entertainment on a new web series called Electric City (logo not shown). According to the AP, the show is about a “seemingly peaceful city situated in a post-apocalyptic world” and each episode will be three or four minutes long.
The shows will have a socially conscious message including conservation and energy issues. This is Yahoo’s first scripted program and it will be available through multiple devices in multiple languages. Hanks will appear as a character.
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As you may have heard, Yahoo finally has a new CEO: PayPal president Scott Thompson will be serving that particular, unambiguously difficult role.
We hopped on the conference call Yahoo orchestrated for the occasion, and picked up on some interesting things said by Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock on the future of the company.
Bostock said, in no uncertain terms, that Yahoo is currently, and will likely stay a public company.
In other words: so much for the full buyout scenario. → Read More
Last Friday, troubled Internet giant Yahoo filed a new trademark application with the USPTO. I can’t find any record of an existing Yahoo product or service by the name, so I figured I should just throw it out here for all of you to speculate what the company has up its sleeves.
The name, before I forget to mention it, is Yahoo Axis. That will make you none the wiser, but perhaps the classes and descriptions might. → Read More
Later this month Yahoo plans to release new features for its iPad based app, Livestand, which was launched in November and Yahoo describes as a “digital newsstand” where users can “create a personalized magazine based on topics” they find interesting.
Debra Weissman, VP Product Management with Livestand, Yahoo offered us a brief early look at what consumers can expect to see. → Read More
VC Marc Andreessen has taken to his personal blog to quell the rumors that he’s in the running for the position of chairman of the board at Yahoo. The rumors have been widely reported by a number of news outlets based on unknown sources. Serious speculation has ensued, even leading people to wonder what the VC’s first move at Yahoo as chairman of the board will be. (Hint: find a CEO, it’s been suggested).
Well, put those rumors to rest, says Andreeseen. It’s not happening.
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The future for Internet services pioneer Yahoo remains uncertain, to put it mildly.
Currently a beleaguered takeover target sans visionary CEO (although one could argue recently fired Carl Bartz never served that role either), Asian e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba Group is apparently going to great lengths to re-acquire the stake Yahoo has in the company. → Read More
Yahoo has just announced that it has been awarded a $610 million default judgment against spammers responsible for a fake Yahoo lottery email scheme. The order was handed down by a federal district court judge in New York on Monday, December 5, 2011.
Apparently in the scheme, email messages were sent to users trying to deceive them into believing they had won a lottery prize offered by Yahoo. The hoax was designed to get users to send spammers personal data such as social security numbers and credit card numbers, which are then used for identity and credit theft. Yahoo originally filed the lawsuit in 2008. → Read More
Yahoo’s famous, long-standing billboard on the San Francisco skyline is coming down. In two weeks, the space will be available for some other company, according to a report in the San Francisco Egotist. The billboard outlasted 4 Yahoo CEO’s. It was put up under Tim Koogle in 1999, and survived through Terry Semel, Jerry Yang, Carol Bartz, and now Interim CEO Tim Morse.
The retro billboard was put up in a dot-com era before Facebook and Twitter. There’s some speculation now on whether a new dot-com might take over the space. → Read More
There have been a number of rumors circulating around Yahoo, Microsoft, and Aol of late, most of them focusing on a potential Aol/Yahoo merger, or Yahoo’s acquisition by Aol or Microsoft, etc. Well, it seems the companies have officially become linked, but they’ve run into each other’s arms not by way of M&A, but by way of display ads. Yes, the three internet behemoths today announced agreements that they hope will improve the process of buying and selling premium online display inventory. In other words, the agreements will allow each to offer the other’s display ads to their respective customers. → Read More
Social TV app IntoNow, which Yahoo acquired earlier this year for $20 to $30 million, is heading to the iPad today with the launch of a native app.
In case you aren’t familiar with IntoNow, the service IntoNow, a new service that allows you to tell your friends what television shows and movies you’re watching in realtime. But unlike other media “check-in” services, you do this simply by hitting a button and letting your phone listen to what you’re watching. It’s that audio tracing technology that made it an appealing purchase for Yahoo, compared to the plethora of other social check-in apps.
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Yahoo has just announced that it is purchasing Interclick, a data-driven ad network. The total acquisition price is around $270 million, or $9 per share.
Interclick is a technology company providing solutions for data-driven advertising. The Company’s proprietary Open Segment Manager (OSM) platform organizes and valuates billions of data points daily to construct the most responsive digital audiences for major digital marketers. Interclick’s proprietary advertising technology helps improve data targeting in online advertising and is optimized to work with large data volumes across multiple providers and marketplaces.
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As reported earlier this year, Yahoo and Benchmark Capital announced their backing and Apache Hadoop spin-off Hortonworks. The startup was launched to accelerate the adoption of Apache Hadoop, the open source software that powers the data processing engines of the world’s largest web sites.
Today, Hortonworks is debuting the Hortonworks Data Platform. The company also announced support and training offerings and partner enablement programs to aid enterprises, ISVs and systems integrators in implementing Apache Hadoop-based solutions. → Read More
TechCrunch TV is now really TechCrunch TV. When TCTV launched last year, the focus was on viewing our videos on the computer. Not on TV. Ok, we called it “TechCrunch TV” because it sounded a lot better than “TechCrunch Video”. But today, we are launching on the AOL HD platform and you can find us on your connected TV set.
Our videos are live on Roku, Boxee, Divx and Yahoo Connected TV platforms. Together, these platforms reach over 12 million devices. And that number is growing. Don’t be surprised if more platforms get added as well. (AOL, the owner of TechCrunch, didn’t want me to say anything about that. Oh well.) → Read More
Yahoo reported third quarter earnings today. Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs (“revenue ex-TAC”) was $1.072 billion for the third quarter of 2011, a 5 percent decrease from the third quarter of 2010. Net earnings per diluted share decreased 21 percent to $0.23 in the third quarter of 2011, compared to $0.29 in the third quarter of 2010. Yahoo actually beat Wall Street expectations; analysts expected earnings of $0.17 a share, on revenue of $1.09 billion.
Net income for the quarter came in at $293 million, down 26 percent from the same quarter in 2010. Income from operations decreased 6 percent to $177 million in the third quarter of 2011, compared to $189 million in the third quarter of 2010. The year over year decreases were primarily due to the revenue share related to the Search Agreement with Microsoft. GAAP revenue was $1.217 billion for the third quarter of 2011, a 24 percent decrease from the third quarter of 2010, again primarily due to the Search Agreement and the associated revenue share with Microsoft. → Read More
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