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Yahoo Seeking Partnership With News Corp.
rattlesoft tips us to a Washington Post report that Yahoo is now seeking a partnership with News Corp. A related Reuters article notes that analysts are skeptical of such a deal. From the Post:
"Yahoo is talking with a number of potential partners, possibly as a way to either stave off future Microsoft offers or in an effort to drive up the software giant's offer. The talks between News Corp. and Yahoo ... may signal a resumption of discussions that took place last summer between the two media giants that quieted during the fall. Such a combination would make News Corp. the largest single shareholder in a Yahoo/Fox Interactive unit. That would marry the world's most popular social-networking site, MySpace, with Yahoo's 4 billion page views per month to make a formidable opponent for Google."
I realize they're competing in market share and some products, but would that make them opponents? As far as I'm concerned, I use Google search (and a lot of other Google stuff) and this deal wouldn't make me change anything.
I don't see this as competing with Google's targeted ads at all (except in market share, and it's nowhere near enough to be a serious competition in that).
Maybe I'm missing something though.
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
What Yahoo is trying to say is : "Anything but Microsoft. ANYTHING !"
this one time... at computer camp... I shoved a linux cd in my windows computer
Fuck them, they ruin everything they get their greedy little mitts on; latest example is one of my favorite Firefox extensions, FoxyTunes. They were bought out by Yahoo! and subsequently had to replace the lyrics query that went to the open LyricWiki with Y!Music, which hardly contains any lyrics to the songs I listen to. Oh, and of course Yahoo! Music doesn't allow you to upload lyrics you transcribed yourself. I've started hating Yahoo! with a really serious passion lately...
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
I think the most important message here is that search engines should be obliged under law to insure the integrity of their search algorithms and that any deviation is documented and transparent. It would be scary if one of the worlds biggest search engines overweighted Fox News in searches for factual information, downplaying Reuters, etc. I'm not saying Fox makes stuff up but they certainly have their own, shall we say, house style.
I definitely do not. Microsoft's bias is simple: They want windows to win, and in so doing want to make lots of money.
If you've been paying attention to the issue for the past decade or so, then you'll know that News Corp's bias is much more complex and nefarious, and extends to utilizing its media influence to systematically press a political agenda. For example, with high confidence you could attribute the majority of the support for the Iraq war in the U.S., Britain, and Australia, to the specific influence of the massive collection of News Corp media. Their organization sets the media agenda from the top down, distributing the political message to all the lower employees to distribute. Then the sheer volume of this influence redirects the narrative of the entire national debate on a topic. This is no conspiracy theory, but is simply a plain and open fact.
This is far more dangerous to the world than a question of operating systems.