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Yahoo said the “For Sale” sign is still on its front lawn and that Microsoft should buy the company.

The internet portal’s co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang made the comment despite the fact Yahoo rejected a $33 (£21) a share offer from Microsoft back in May.

Mr Yang’s suggestion also came hours after Google pulled out of an internet advertising partnership with Yahoo.

“To this day the best thing for Microsoft to do is buy Yahoo,” said Mr Yang.

“I don’t think that is a bad idea at all, at the right price whatever that price is. We’re willing to sell the company,” he told a packed ballroom at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco.During the on stage conversation in front of a standing-room only crowd, Mr Yang was asked why the company did not take the $33 a share offered back in the summer. The company’s share price closed Wednesday below $14 (£8.80) a share.

“They walked away from a public offering and we were ready to negotiate. We wanted to negotiate a deal. We felt we weren’t that far apart.

“At the end of the day, they withdrew and they have since been clear about not wanting to buy the company,” explained Mr Yang in a rare public appearance.

Microsoft did however come back and offer to buy the search part of Yahoo, but a deal was never struck.

Again Mr Yang said the offer then was not good enough but he still remained open to persuasion.

“As far as a search deal goes, we are open-minded about it. The last time we felt the deal was not a good one for the company but that doesn’t mean we won’t do one.”

When asked if any negotiations were pending with the software giant, Mr Yang said “There is no new news.”

Microsoft declined to comment.

And when quizzed about a possible deal with AOL, Mr Yang played coy with his host John Battelle.

“Buying AOL? I can’t talk about that, John. If I told you I would have to kill you.”

‘Disappointed’

While Yahoo is still holding the door open to Microsoft, Google closed one earlier in the day on a deal the two companies had struck up over search advertising.

After four months of scrutiny from the Department of Justice, Google decided to back out of the agreement it had made to provide advertising around the internet portal’s search results.
jerry yang
Mr Yang told the summit “I am passionate about Yahoo”

It had been estimated that the venture would have been worth around $800m (£500m) a year to Yahoo.

“Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners,” said Google’s chief counsel David Drummond.

Mr Yang said he was “disappointed that they [Google] didn’t want to defend this deal.”

But he felt that in his mind, the government scuppered it.

“I really thought the government in this case does not understand our industry. They have a market definition that I think is too narrow and I think things like this tend to have unintended consequences for our entire industry.

“So I clearly don’t agree with what the viewpoint is, but they are the government and they can decide on these things.”

Mr Yang pointed out that the Google partnership was not crucial to its bottom line and that it was “incremental” to its overall growth plans.

For some people, it’s a dream come true: the ability to buy an iPhone 3G in Australia totally unlocked and without a contract.

When Apple unveiled the iconic first generation iPhone, it tried a new business model that no other handset maker had dared consider: demanding a chunk of the carrier’s monthly plan fee. For that payment, the carrier got exclusivity on selling the iPhone in its country, and Apple was able to sell a very expensive device for what appeared to the consumer as a cheaper up-front cost.It also allowed Apple to sell the phone at its own stores without taking on the burden of signing up customers to a contract on the spot. Effectively, it greased the wheels for those iPhones to walk out the door of the Apple Store without the same sort of pain usually involved with buying a mobile phone.

Of course, it was really just a subsidised phone handset dressed up in a different way. Nokia has been doing it for years — it sells a phone to a carrier for $500, which the carrier sells to the customer for $99 and then recoups the upfront cost over the course of the contract through the monthly plan fee.

In Apple’s case, the phone was sold the phone to the carrier for a reduced price, with Apple  receiving the full price of the phone over time through the carrier revenue sharing model.

Of course, as became very obvious just weeks after the official launch of the iPhone, the revenue-share model didn’t work at all, thanks to hackers who were able to break every layer of protection in the iPhone repeatedly, making it possible to walk into an Apple Store, buy the iPhone (which was supposed to be usable only once activated with a carrier), run a simple utility and unlock the iPhone for use on any carrier.

Customers also hated being forced to buy the iPhone from a carrier of Apple’s choice, rather than their own. There are numerous reasons people choose one carrier over another, and being forced to be with a particular carrier just to buy an iPhone grated Apple’s loyal fan base in the same way being forced to use a Windows PC at work does.

As Apple looked to expand its iPhone coverage around the world, it must have drawn the conclusion that the one-carrier revenue sharing model wasn’t going to work. It had the most chance of succeeding in the retarded US telecommunications market, which frequently sees particular models of phone being sold only through one carrier. In most other parts of the world, most phones are sold through all carriers in a country, and carriers compete on pricing and coverage rather than handset exclusivity. If it failed there, Apple must have known it would fail even more miserably elsewhere.

Now, it seems that Apple and the carriers are embracing the opportunity to sell iPhones totally unlocked. Australian telco Optus will sell iPhone 3G handsets for use with prepaid SIM cards for $AU729 for the 8GB model or $AU849 for the 16GB model. They can be unlocked free of charge after six months, or a $AU80 payment any time before then (including at the time you buy the phone) will give you an unlock code for the phone.  This means a totally unlocked iPhone 3G can be yours for $809 for the 8GB model or $949 for the 16GB model.

As a result, the market for new iPhones on eBay won’t be going away any time soon — though at those prices, carriers will still be making plenty of money selling unlocked iPhones.

What is yet to be seen is how Apple will sell the iPhone through its own Apple Stores. An Apple Store Sydney employee confirmed to me that people would be able to buy the iPhone there from 11th July, but it will be curious to see whether Apple will only allow people to walk out of the store after going through a carrier activation process.

Visit the Apple Store or visit Discount Electronics for cheap deals on iPhones

Forcing customers through a carrier contract and activation process seemed the  most likely thing for Apple to do after so many first-gen iPhones were cracked and Apple lost the carrier commission, but if carriers themselves are selling the iPhone for use with prepaid SIM cards, which allows the customer to buy an iPhone without signing a contract, will Apple allow that as well? We certainly hope so. It would be unfortunate if customers of Apple’s own stores were treated as second-rate customers compared to those who walk into a mobile phone carrier’s shop.

Meanwhile, for users of lonely first-generation hacked iPhones in Australia, Optus has confirmed that it will allow users to sign up to an iPhone plan with their own iPhone. We’re still waiting to hear back on the details — whether it will require a contract, or whether BYO iPhone plans will be contract-free.

Source: apcmag

Just two weeks after releasing Windows Embedded Standard 2009 based on Windows XP, Microsoft said Tuesday that the next version — code-named “Quebec” — will be built atop the Windows 7 code base.

The news is significant, because it indicates that Microsoft is serious about making Windows 7 capable of running on devices with limited power. During the PDC keynote Tuesday, Microsoft Windows head Steven Sinofsky showed the audience a netbook (or sub-notebook) running Windows 7. Most netbooks currently ship with Windows XP or Linux.Microsoft still uses Windows XP for its embedded platform, despite the operating system being 7 years old. The company hasn’t been able to slim down Windows Vista enough to make it workable in embedded environments. There is an “Embedded Enterprise” version of Vista, but it has the same hardware requirements as the full OS and simply offers a customizable interface.

Sinofsky said that Microsoft has done a lot of work to fix the slowdowns and bulk introduced in Windows Vista. From boot times, to menu response, Windows 7 promises to be leaner and faster than its predecessor.

In addition, the operating system can be componentized — an essential feature for embedded devices. Developers can pick the technologies and features they need in order to size the OS for their device, with only the drivers, services and applications they need.

By migrating to Windows 7, Windows Embedded Quebec will offer a number of important improvements over the aging XP code base, including multi-touch interface support, gesture support and Windows Presentation Foundation. Silverlight 2 and Internet Explorer 8 with private browsing will be included; Silverlight 1.1 and IE7 are currently offered in WES 2009.

Perhaps more importantly for developers, they can build applications for Quebec using Visual Studio 2010, just as they would for Windows 7, with full 64-bit support.

Microsoft hasn’t set a release date for Quebec, but it will likely arrive around the time Windows 7 launches in early 2010.

But how does this affect non-embedded systems? The changes that Microsoft is introducing in Windows 7 to make it capable of being slimmed down will positively impact full PC use as well. Mike Nash, vice president of Windows Product Management at Microsoft, told BetaNews that Windows 7, even with its new features, will run equally as fast — if not faster — than Vista on the same PC hardware.

www.macworld.com