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The following email was sent to all Microsoft employees from CEO Steve Ballmer at 5:17 pm PDT (see Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal): From: Steve Ballmer Date: May 3, 2008 5:17:30 PM PDT To: “Microsoft - All Employees (QBDG)” Subject: Withdrawal of Offer to Acquire Yahoo! This afternoon I sent the attached letter [see update 2 here for letter to Yahoo] to Jerry Yang announcing that Microsoft has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo. We proposed the deal in the ...

« Essential SEO Spring Cleaning For Your Website | Main | Developing In-House SEO Functionality » Sprint, the troubled, third largest US wireless carrier has been mulling a spin off or sale of Nextel and has been the subject of takeover rumors itself. It had ambitious plans to roll out a national WiMax network that had seemingly been placed on the back burner. However, today, the company announced a major deal involving Intel, Google, Clearwire, TimeWarner Cable and Comcast, which are all ...

The most publicized improvements to email in recent memory haven’t been browser-based, they’ve been extensions like Xobni and Xoopit that latch onto your existing mail client and provide auxiliary services. This tactic makes good business sense - who wants to try convincing Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and Gmail users to take a leap of faith and walk away from these BigCo solutions for an unproven startup? As things stand, that migration is necessary without a way to integrate 3rd-party technologies ...

Every city has its urban eccentrics -- those can't-miss characters who seem to make full-time jobs out of being seen (and sometimes heard) around town. From bare-chested marvels to perpetual protesters with crazy signs, these colorful people are being turned into unlikely internet celebrities by a new breed of local websites that use social networks, citizen reporting, mapping mashups and a healthy dose of humor to chronicle their subjects' activities. In Manhattan, the Find He-Man blog ...

« Twitter Wrote This Column For Me | Main | SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 29, 2008 » The Google LatLong Blog announced that you can now see street views turn-by-turn (when available) when you are seeking out driving directions via Google Maps. For example, when driving from the Empire State Building to Times Square, you can see that Google has street views available for every turn. A camera icon, next to each step of the directions are available to click on. Clicking on the camera shows ...

« April 2008: Search Engine Land's Most Popular Stories | Main Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past month. It's also available by feed here. Below, news about Search Engine Land itself, then our 10 most popular stories from April 2008, then a major story for various search topics along with other stories related to those topics since our last monthly newsletter through today. ============================== Search Engine Land ...

« Thanks For Taking Our Survey; And The SMX Ticket Winner Is... | Main | WSJ: Microsoft, Yahoo Talking To Avoid Hostile Proxy Fight » In another case of major mapspam (discovered first by Imnotadoctor), a SMB-local internet market firm, Big Local, has captured many of the top positions in the Google Maps "onebox" for the category "internet consulting." Below are some examples from various cities. San Francisco: Dallas: And the worst example, Boston: The "about us" link is broken so it's ...

« Local Internet Marketing Firm Spams Google Maps Bigtime | Main | SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 2, 2008 » The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Microsoft and Yahoo are holding talks to try and avoid the promised proxy battle/hostile takeover effort that is certain to be wearying for both sides. According to the paper: "Talks between Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. intensified Friday as the two sides explored the possibility of a last-ditch friendly deal, according to people ...

« Will Social Networking Kill Search? | Main | Google Maps Now Offers Traffic Predictions » There are two new interviews available, one from Google's VP of search quality, Udi Manber and one from Googler, Matt Cutts. Popular Mechanics interviewed Udi Manber and posted the interview transcript online. Matt Cutts did an audio/podcast interview with Duct Tape Marketing. Here is a summary of my notes from each interview: Udi Manber Interview: - 450 Algorithmic Improvements in Google Search Last ...

« Google's VP, Marissa Mayer, On "Don't Be Evil" Company Motto | Main According to the Google Earth Blog, Google Earth version 4.3 (free) is coming later today. Among the upgrades and improvements are faster load times for 3D buildings, day/night lighting, new navigational options and StreetView images. (Google has also just started to let StreetView on to third party sites.) In addition, as the Google LatLong Blog reports, KML (which originally stood for "Keyhole Markup Language") has now ...