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…)

Thi came as surprise..

according to a letter from Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang.

But Yahoo demanded at least $53 billion, or $37 per share, according to Ballmer. That would have been nearly double Yahoo’s stock price of $19.18 at the time Microsoft first made its bid a little over three months ago.

“Clearly a deal is not to be,” Ballmer wrote.

A spokeswoman for Sunnyvale-based Yahoo didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment. (more…)

Domain news reports:

As promised, we are keeping you up to date on this developing story…  As  we reported yesterday, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer had held firm with the original offer, insisting it was fair in light of Yahoo’s eroding profits during the past two years. He threatened an attempt to oust Yahoo’s board if the 10 directors, including Chief Executive Jerry Yang, didn’t accept the offer by April 26th.
Since Yahoo has forced the issue by letting the deadline pass, Ballmer appears ready to put more money on the table. Microsoft’s board reportedly met earlier this week to consider raising the bid as high as $33 per share. It wasn’t clear whether Microsoft presented that figure, which would translate to about $47.5 billion for the deal, to Yahoo Friday. (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…)

domainnamewire reports

Yahoo will stop allowing arbitrage as of this Friday, will affect other major companies as well.

In a major move sure to have ramifications across the online advertising industry, Yahoo (YHOO) has told its advertising partners that it will no longer accept “arbitraged” traffic as of this Friday. Here’s a look at what this means for domainers and even the revenue of big online advertising companies.

That will be a hard blow to many “domainers” who only had a short term strategy of buy and selling clicks. Few months ago several threads poped up in DNF where people claimed to make over $1-2K/day on arbitrage and parked.com officially confirmed that they allow it. But now, as it was expected, the door has closed.