Software utilities

Taken from Google System blog

Q1. How is Yahoo! responding to Microsoft’s proposal?
The Yahoo! Board is undertaking a deliberate review process. They’re going to take time to thoroughly evaluate the proposal in the context of Yahoo!’s strategic plans. This will include evaluating all of the Company’s strategic alternatives – including maintaining Yahoo! as an independent company. That process will take some time, but the Board will ultimately pursue the option that it believes can best maximize value for our shareholders.Q2. How long will the Board’s review process take?
A review process like this is fluid, and it can take quite a bit of time.

Q3. Will the Board seek proposals from any other companies?
The Board is going to evaluate all of Yahoo!’s strategic alternatives and pursue the option that it believes can best maximize value for our shareholders.

Q4. What would a deal like this mean for Yahoo!’s users, advertisers, publishers, partners and people?
Yahoo!’s Board is going to evaluate all aspects of this proposal carefully and promptly in the context of the company’s strategic plans and alternatives. So it wouldn’t be appropriate to speculate about the potential benefits or challenges of a deal. But the review process that’s underway won’t have any impact on our efforts to deliver value to all of our users, advertisers, publishers and partners – as well as new and exciting opportunities to our employees.

Domain tasting is a practice that lets you register a .com domain and try it out for 5 days. During this time you can check out if it has good natural traffic and decide if you want to keep the domain or let it go. If you do not keep it, you can have a bonus to register another domain. Now ICANN wants to stop this process, making you pay also for those tries (maybe keeping part of the registration price). An ICANN reccommendation reports:

“Tasting has been a serious challenge for the Internet community and has grown exponentially since 2004. In January 2007 the top 10 domain tasters accounted for 95% of all deleted .com and .net domain names — or 45,450,897 domain names out of 47,824,131 total deletes.”

Microsoft offered $44.6, around 31$ per share, to buy Yahoo and contrast Google on the search and advertising market. the price is around 50%up from Yahoo closing yesterday. I wish I had a few Yahoo stocks in my portfolio!!