Adobe decided to help Google and Yahoo! by providing them to its Flash Player technology in a “quest” to finally get the flash content indexed in the two search engines. Google is the first beneficiary taking already the first steps by indexing the links embeded in rich media files.
Flash lover site publishers will certainly appreciate Adobe’s effort.
Read More on: Flash Content Searchability
Microsoft announced it will not be going forward with its plan to buy Yahoo, after it was clear the two sides could not agree on a price, and Steve Ballmer elected not to risk his entire career on the deal.
Microsoft raised its offer to $33 (effectively adding $4 to the deal, based on stock value, or $5 billion, and Yahoo wanted another $4, a total of $10 billion over the original offer, which Microsoft believed was unworkable.
Now with the deal off, it looks like Yahoo could announce a deal to give its ad business to Google as early as this week. Perhaps Microsoft plans to let Google get Yahoo, and thus almost the entire market, then try to bury their big competitor under an avalanche of antitrust complaints…
Despite the bum economy, Internet retail sales will rise 16.6 % in 2008 to $204 billion, about the same rate of growth as in 2007, according to the latest annual study by Forrester Research. That’s way above the 3.5% growth in overall retail sales predicted for 2008 by the National Retail Federation. The biggest online categories: apparel (due to rise by $3.9 billion, or 17%), computers (up $3.2 billion, or 15%) and autos (up $2.5 billion, or 15%).
Of course, “e-tailing,” despite becoming more and more prevalent over the last few years, still accounts for less than 5% of the overall retail market in the U.S. The relatively small dollar base all but assures double-digit annual growth.
Google Inc. received 67% of all U.S. Internet searches during the four weeks ended March 29, according to information service Hitwise.
Google received 64% of all U.S. Internet searches in the same period a year earlier.
Yahoo Inc.’s search engine received 20% of U.S. Web searches in the more recent period, while Microsoft Corp.’s MSN Search drew 7% and Ask.com 4%.
The remaining 46 search engines in Hitwise’s search engine analysis tool accounted for about 2% of searches in the U.S.
