Would Microsoft Really Walk Away from Yahoo??? - According to a report published by Reuters Microsoft is “evaluating” its $42 billion offer for Yahoo. The comments, suggest Microsoft is considering walking away should Yahoo fail to agree to terms, come on the heels of reports that executives at the two tech titans met this week but failed to reach an agreement on the cash and stock offer. Microsoft is worried that a slowing economy and changes in Yahoo’s business stand to lower its value. Yahoo’s top brass is to meet Monday to discuss the ... read more ...

Google Gets Outperform Recommendation - Bernstein Research analyst Jeffrey Lindsay, increased it price target on Google today to $750 a shares stating that Google is poised to gain from changes to its online ad platform, AdWords, which should drive revenue higher. According to Lindsay, Google by changing its AdWords program by ‘slapping’ low quality advertisers and arbitrage marketers off its search results pages by re-pricing many low-cost keywords used by these companies, is driving down paid clicks, but also driving keyword pricing ... read more ...

Banks.com Reports Earnings - banks.com one of the companies in our Domain Parking Stock Index reported its earnings yesterday For the year ended December 31, 2007, Banks.com reported revenue of $27.8 million, an increase of 8% increase over fiscal year 2006 revenue. GAAP net income was $1.7 million or $0.06 per diluted share versus $3.4 million or $0.12 per diluted share for the year ended 2006. Adjusted EBITDA2 was $6.8 million, compared to Adjusted EBITDA of $7.7 million for the year ended ... read more ...

Microsoft Will Not Increase Bid For Yahoo - In a report published by the Wall Street Journal today they report that Microsoft will not raise it’s $31 a share bid for Yahoo stating that the original bid is looking better given the downturn in the economy and a falling stock market, the sources say. “There’s no reason to bid against ourselves,” a source told the Journal. The newspaper is also reporting that “other people familiar with Microsoft’s thinking say the company has no immediate plans to nominate a slate of directors to ... read more ...

Communicate.com (Live Current) Reports Record Earnings for a 4th Quarter - Live Current, the company formerly known as Communicate.com, reported its financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2007.  Total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2007 increased 17% to $9.1 million compared to $7.8 million for the same period in 2006. Moreover in 2006 revenue was boosted by the sale of two domain names, Vancover.com and Wrestling.com for $623,800. Gross profit for 2007 increased 24% to $2.1 million compared to $1.7 million for 2006. The ... read more ...

Google Paid Clicks Slows for Second Month in a Row - According to a report by the research firm comScore, Inc., Google had its second straight month of disappointing growth in paid clicks. Data from comScore indicate that Google’s paid clicks in February rose only 3% compared with the same month a year earlier. Paid clicks are the number of times Google search users click on a sponsored-search result, generating revenue from the company’s advertising customers. Google reported 25% growth in paid clicks in its fiscal fourth quarter ended in ... read more ...

Communicate.com changes name, creates acquistion - Communicate.com (CMNN.ob) changed its name to Live Current Media, Inc. The company also announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Auctomatic, an early stage start-up.  Auctomatic has developed commerce technology and tools that enable sellers to easily transact online through sites such as eBay. The acquisition is expected to close in May. The company had this to say about the acquisition of auctomatic: “”””The pending acquisition of Auctomatic is an opportunity for Live Current ... read more ...

Citigroup: Microsoft will lift bid for Yahoo - Accordingto reports, a Citigroup analyst, Mark Mahaney upgraded Yahoo to a buy and predicted that Microsoft Corp. will raise its bid to $34 a share, saying that, despite the uncertainty surrounding the proposed merger, Microsoft is determined to pursue the deal, even at a higher price. “We believe the likelihood of Microsoft of walking away from the deal is small,” he said in a research note. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...

Is Google of 2008 like Yahoo of 1999??? - In a very interesting article published by Dow Jones today, the question is asked is Google of Today like Yahoo of 1999. The article states: “”””In 1999, it would have been presumptuous to compare the fledging online search company Google with the world’s most popular Internet portal, Yahoo.””” “””Google of today finds itself in a position similar to the Yahoo of old: Both are quirky-named companies with a corporate counter-culture and a seeming control of the Internet world. ... read more ...

FCC Spectrum Auction nets 19.6 Billion in Bids - A sale of communications airwaves by the federal government to the commercial wireless industry closed Tuesday, after 261 rounds of bidding and $19.6 billion in bids.The Federal Communications Commission has not revealed who the winners of the valuable radio spectrum licenses are The sale has been among the most closely followed in the 15-year history of airwaves auctions as the spectrum being sold has the ability to transmit signals over vast geographic distances and through buildings in urban settings. Commercial ... read more ...

Communicate.com Gets a Good Recommendation from SmallCapInvestor.com - In an article in the smallcapinvestor.com about communicate.com, the author gave communicate.com high marks and recongized the value of domain names in general: “””Communicate.com owns highly valuable Internet domain names. Domain names, although their intrinsic value is difficult to assess, have been sold for extremely high prices. Beer.com went for $7 million. Porn.com was snapped up for $9.5 million. At the height of dot-com mania in 2000, AsSeenOnTv.com was purchased for $5.1 million. Even ... read more ...

Google: Microsoft Acquisition of Yahoo would be “Bad for a Internet” - 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 ... read more ...

Yahoo Looks to a Future - Yahoo says it expects to roughly double operating cash flow over the next three years and generate $8.8 billion in revenue after costs in 2010.Yahoo says its three-year financial plan support the board’s determination that Microsoft’s Jan. 31 takeover bid undervalues the company. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo Inc. continues to expect first-quarter revenue of $1.28 billion and $1.38 billion and full-year revenue of $5.35 billion to $5.95 billion. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expect revenue ... read more ...

Microsoft Buys online ad company - On Friday Microsoft announced that they bought Rapt, a San Francisco-based online ad management firm, for an undisclosed sum. The move came three days after Google’s closed on its 3.3 billion dollar, acquisition of DoubleClick. Both acquisitions are a sign of the heated battle between the companies for a share of the growing display advertising market. Since Google announced its intention to buy DoubleClick last April, Microsoft has spent $6 billion to buy aQuantive, an ad network that competes ... read more ...

Yahoo Microsoft Talk - According to the Wall Street Journal, Senior executives from Microsoft and Yahoo met for the first time Monday to discuss Microsoft’s takeover offer for the internet company,  a breakthrough that could be the first step toward a friendly deal between the two rivals. However, no bankers attended and no further talks have been scheduled, according to the Journal report. The meeting occurred Monday near Yahoo’s Sunnyvale headquartersYahoo releases its first-quarter earnings April 22. Google+Michael ... read more ...

AOL Buy’s Social Networking Site for 850 Million - AOL Annouced today that it will pay $850 million in cash to acquire social media network Bebo, which has total global membership of more than 40 million. Bebo is one of the largest social networks in Britain, and is ranked number one in Ireland and New Zealand and number three in the U.S, according to AOL. News Corp. , which also owns the Fox television and movie studios, in addition to newspaper and Internet holdings, bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005, but has estimated the network is now ... read more ...

Disney: Not shopping AOL - The CEO of Disney, Robert Iger,  speaking to a media conference in New York, said today that Disney would had no interest in acquiring AOL from Time Warner, which is expected to be on the market shortly. According to other reports Yahoo has been talking to Time Warner about entering into some relationship to fend off Microsoft’s bid. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...

Baidu.com: Traffic Increases - According to a report by the AP, in a note to investors, a Susquehanna Financial Group analyst, C. Ming Zhao, said the Baidu, the chinese online search engine operator’s traffic surged in late February, due to a return to normal Web usage in the wake of the Chinese New Year holiday and searches for photos related to a sex-photo scandal that involved some Hong Kong celebrities. “While the search for sex-scandal photos should be one-time in nature, and should not lead to monetization, such events ... read more ...

Marchex President Sells 22,000 Shares - The president and CEO of Marchex, John Keistersold, sold 22,000 shares of common stock under a prearranged trading plan for $9.05 apiece.The stock sale was conducted under a prearranged 10b5-1 trading plan which allows a company insider to set up a program in advance for such transactions and proceed with them even if he or she comes into possession of material nonpublic information. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...

Murdock: News Corp is Out of Yahoo Bidding - According to reports, Rupert Murdoch said he will not battle Microsoft to act as a white knight for Yahoo ‘We’re not going to get into a fight with Microsoft, which has a lot more money than us,’ Murdoch was quoted in the Financial Times as saying. ‘We’re very happy to be in the Google camp,’ the Hollywood Reporter quoted Murdoch as saying. News Corp’s online social network MySpace has a web search deal with Google. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...

Yahoo/ Microsoft Update - It is over a month since Microsoft announced its initial bid to buy Yahoo for $31 a share We thought we catch up on some developments. Yahoo pushed back the March 14 deadline to nominate Yahoo’s board members until 10 days after it sets a date for its annual stockholder meeting. Yahoo has not set a date for its next annual stockholder meeting.  Under Delaware law, It could push the date as far back as July 12 which would be exactly 13 months from of its last shareholder meeting . According to ... read more ...

Google: Another insider Sell Shares - Last week we let you know that the Vice President of Google sold 19,472 shares, today it was annouced that a director of Google, John L. Doerr, sold 32,650 shares of common stock under a prearranged trading plan, for between $455 and $469.25 a share. The stock sale was conducted under a prearranged 10b5-1 trading plan, which allows a company insider to set up a program in advance for such transactions and proceed with them even if he or she comes into possession of material non-public information. Google+Michael ... read more ...

Google get 66% of all U.S. Internet Searches - In a report released today by Hitwise, Google received 66% of all U.S. Internet searches during the four weeks ended Feb. 23. In the year-ago period, Google received 64% of all U.S. Internet searches. Yahoo received 21% of U.S. Internet searches, Microsoft’s MSN Search received 7% and Ask.com received 4% of searches during the period. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...

Marchex Director Buy Shares - A director of Marchex Inc., Nicolas Hanauer, bought 98,000 shares of stock of Marchex, a week ago Friday, on February 22, for between $8.26 to $8.50 a share. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...

Fortune Mag Asks: Is Google Running out of Gas?? - In a very interesting article published by Fortune Magazine’s Techland Blog, the Article notes that Google’s annual growth rate has declined from 56.5% to 28.2%, and in the past three months Google Market Cap has decreased 85 Billion Dollars, as the stock has gone from over $700 a share to $450. The article cites the report from earlier this week, showing that there was no increase on Google click ad volume in January and also looked at problems Google  is having selling other than pay per click ... read more ...