Google withdraws advertising deal from Yahoo!, Yahoo! pleads with Microsoft to buy it

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Search giant Google has withdrawn its potential advertising deal with Yahoo! due to fears of regulatory denial and the hassle of associated lawsuits. It’s a move that leaves Yahoo! floundering without a clear direction, and has led many bloggers to call for the head of CEO Jerry Yang.

Yahoo! has a lot of good stuff in the pipeline, and it’d be a great shame if it goes under. After rejecting a deal with Microsoft earlier this year, however, they’re now pleading with the software giant to buy them. CEO Yang says: “We’re willing to sell the company.”

It remains to be seen what’ll happen, but one thing’s for sure – there are rocky times ahead for the owner of the most popular portal on the internet.

Yahoo! (via BBC)

Related posts: Microsoft, Yahoo!, Western Union and the African Development Bank team up to fight internet scammers | Yahoo! in 2009: More social, and more open

NOISE GATE: Do geeks know anything about the music business?

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An almighty beef has kicked off between Idolator and Listening Post, where the former has blasted the latter with a headline accusing them of stupidity, claiming that “online nerds” don’t know anything about the music business.

It started with the disclosure of EMI’s financial data the other day. In that, it was revealed that 88% of EMI’s artists make a loss, almost 50 per cent of CDs were returned unsold in April and May 2007, and the label spent £700,000 on taxis in London in the last financial year. To anyone but old-school music business people, that would seem ridiculous and not a good way to run a company, right…?

Radiohead "pay what you want" numbers released

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Ever since Radiohead’s revolutionary “pay what you want” experiment on their most recent album, “In Rainbows”, the band has steadfastly refused to release any figures on how successful it was.

This led some to conclude that it was a massive flop with millions paying nothing. However, the band’s publisher, Warner-Chapell, has just released figures proving doubters wrong. Across all mediums, physical and download, the band sold three million albums. Considering their previous three albums sold in the low hundreds of thousands, that’s not too bad…

AMD to split into two companies

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Business news anyone? It might not be very exciting, but if you don’t have an Intel chip in the PC you’re reading this on, then you’ll almost certainly have an AMD chip in there, so pay attention.

AMD are splitting their business into two companies. The first will be focused on designing microprocessors, and the second will actually manufacture them – a process which is expensive and debt-laden. The new manufacturing company will be called the Foundry Company, and AMD will own 44.4 percent of it, with the rest being owned by a Abu Dhabi company called Advanced Technology…

NOISE GATE: Why music subscription services will eventually work

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This is the second installment of Noisegate, my weekly column on digital music. If you’re interested, then you can find last week’s, as well as future weeks’ columns right here.

This week I’m going to talk about subscription services and mobile phones. With the launch of Nokia’s “Comes with Music” expected this Thursday, and Sony Ericsson’s “PlayNow” service expected soon, too, I thought now would be a good time to muse on whether subscription services will ever really work in the long term.

InFocus pushes out IN3100 Series multimedia projectors

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InFocus continues to push out business-friendly projectors with the launch of three new models in its IN3100 range. You know what, I wouldn’t mind seeing one of these sitting in my front room.

Sitting neatly between the IN1100 and IN5100 Series of projectors, these units features both DisplayLink and HDMI connections, meaning you should (with the help of an adapter here and there) be able to connect it to pretty much any PC or AV product…