According to the recently published stats by hitwise (first posted here), Google accounted for 67.90 percent of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending April 26, 2008. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 20.28, 6.26 and 4.17 percent respectively. The remaining 45 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.40 percent of U.S. searches.

Hitwise data is based on the sample of 10 million US Internet users. (more…)

In a report published on Monday, Google said it was concerned about the free flow of information on the Internet if Microsoft was to succeed in acquiring Yahoo.“We would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft,” Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told reporters.

“We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the Internet, but I doubt it would be.”

Schmidt pointed to Microsoft’s past history and “the things that it has done that have been so difficult for everyone,” but he did not elaborate. (more…)

AP reports:

DOVER, Del. (AP) — Two Detroit pension funds have sued Yahoo Inc. and its board of directors, saying they breached their duties to shareholders in trying to thwart a takeover by Microsoft Corp.

The lawsuit was filed in Delaware Chancery Court on Thursday by lawyers representing Detroit’s police and fire retirement system and general retirement system, as well as “all other similarly situated public shareholders.”

According to the lawsuit, Yahoo’s board is pursuing “value-destructive” third-party deals in an effort to fight off Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, which on Feb. 1 announced a takeover bid of $31 per share in cash and stock, a 62 percent premium over Yahoo’s previous day’s closing price.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo, whose shares closed unchanged at $28.42 on Friday, rejected Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover bid as inadequate, but indicated that it might be willing to negotiate if the price was right. Yahoo is believed to want at least $40 per share, or about $56 billion. (more…)

This is a complete guide on domain scammers that shows how to recognize and avoid scammers while trading domains.

There are several popular scamming schemes:

1. Scammer sells stolen domains

How it works:

Scammer trying to sell quickly a stolen domain for a bargain price.

A domain can be stolen by hacking into the a email address associated with it - like yahoo, or hotmail; or by means of social engineering, e.g. if a scammer contacts the registrar support and pretends to be the owner of the domain who forgot the password. Stealing passwords is also possible through keyloggers and trojans installed on the domain owner’s computer.

How to avoid having a domain stolen?

- don’t use free email addresses in your domain contact details. Most people still do this and it puts their valuable domain assets as higher risk. Instead use an email address from your own domain.
- install and run an antivirus and antispyware software, update it frequently and run scans. Here is a good guide on cleaning your computer from spyware and viruses.
- always use strong passwords, random letters and numbers that are near each other on the keyboard. Use different passwords for everything and a password manager to keep track of them. Roboform is recommended. Change the passwords once in a while.
- keep your whois contacts and registrar information up to date (more…)