Tuesday, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang sent out his second company-wide e-mail since Microsoft made its unsolicited $44.5 billion bid for Yahoo, a message that made it into an SEC filing Wednesday. He said the same thing he said before: 'No decisions have been made about Microsoft's proposal.' 'The board, he said, 'is focused on maximizing the value of Yahoo!'s tremendous assets for our shareholders. And it is going to take the time it needs to do it right.' Clinging to the pre-tsunami past of a few days ago, he said, 'We won't let it distract us from pursuing our transformation strategy.' Right.

The Yahoo Board is supposed to convene today to thrash out whether or not to accept Microsoft?s $44.6 billion acquisition offer, try to get Microsoft to sweeten the pot, or resist and hammer out an outsourcing deal with Google, according to TechCrunch.

Key opinion-formers in the field of infrastructure and pioneers of virtualization technologies of all types have already begun submitting speaking proposals to Virtualization Conference & Expo 2008 East, being held in New York City, 23-24 June, 2008. Topics covered will range from Server Virtualization, Application Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Network Virtualization, I/O Virtualization and Storage Virtualization, to Virtual Machine Automation, Physical to Virtual (P2V) Migration, Management Applications, Tools and Utilities, and Virtualization Scripts and Procedures.

Google doesn't like the idea of Microsoft buying Yahoo any more than Microsoft likes the idea of Google buying DoubleClick. Today in a blog Google general counsel David Drummond said Microsoft?'s $44.6 billion hostile bid for Yahoo 'raises troubling questions.' 'This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another,' he wrote. 'It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet' openness and innovation,' throwing in Microsoft's face allegations of possible monopolization and antitrust leverage onto 'new, adjacent markets.'

Sun is offering ten grants of US $11,500 - equivalent to several months of pay for developers in some countries - for the best NetBeans projects submitted by open source developers. Conceived as a means of increasing general awareness around the NetBeans project as well as rewarding good work done by the NetBeans Community, the 'Dreams of Reality' contest is described in detail by worldwide NetBeans Community Manager Bruno Souza, the charismatic Brazilian developer, in a special audio webcast currently playing on SYS-CON.TV.

Google, which does not give guidance, missed both Wall Street's top and bottom expectations for its December quarter by a hair and the punters turned vicious pounding it down around 50 bucks after-hours. Consensus demanded non-GAAP earnings of $4.44 on revenues of $3.45 billion. Google came in with $4.43 on revenues $3.39 billion. Those revenues figures are net of what's called TAC, Google's traffic acquisition costs, the money it pays its partners, which it this case amounted $1.44 billion or 30% of its ad revenues.

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Yahoo! released the Yahoo User Interface Library (YUI) as a free, open-source JavaScript and CSS library eighteen months ago along with a commitment to the developer community: We'll share with you our best frontend tools, engage with you about how they're built and why, and we'll document them fully. In that short time, YUI has become one of the best-regarded frontend libraries and has been adopted by individuals on their blogs, startups who are going all-in with YUI as the foundation of their frontend architecture, and Fortune 500 companies using YUI as a trusted, tested, long-view toolkit for creating great user-experiences on the Web.

In the past few years, AJAX has become very popular because it has enabled developers to build more complex web applications. However, in the rush to push the browser to new limits, we have created a monster. While the original goal of AJAX was to make web applications more responsive by not reloading the entire document every time something changed on the page, the use of DHTML has sometimes made the overall experience more sluggish because browsers were never really designed as application platforms, occasionally performing poorly while executing seemingly simple tasks. Furthermore, many 'traditional' application developers have recently moved to the browser, applying their existing skills to a radically different platform, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

Yahoo is planning to lay off hundreds of workers in an effort to cut costs and revive the company's core business, according to reports in several media outlets Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times reported Tuesday that the company is preparing to lay off workers in an effort to re-focus its business.

A coalition of educators, foundations, and internet pioneers today urged governments and publishers to make publicly-funded educational materials available freely over the internet.

eBay CEO Meg Whitman, after 10 years running the company, is planning to retire, according to the Wall Street Journal, which pegs John Donahoe, president of eBay's auction business, for her likely replacement.

CMS Watch rejected the snowball of hype suggesting that Google Analytics and Omniture are the only remaining solid choices for Web Analytics. For mid-sized and larger enterprises in particular, and buyers in the UK and Europe, there are many established vendors who can provide advanced analytics functionality.

Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia anyone can edit, celebrates its seventh birthday. Founded on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has become of the world's ten most visited websites, and the fastest growing, most current, and largest encyclopedia ever created. Currently, the website has nine million articles in over two hundred and fifty languages. It is collaboratively written by volunteers from around the world.

Yahoo! released the Yahoo User Interface Library (YUI) as a free, open-source JavaScript and CSS library eighteen months ago along with a commitment to the developer community: We'll share with you our best frontend tools, engage with you about how they're built and why, and we'll document them fully. In that short time, YUI has become one of the best-regarded frontend libraries and has been adopted by individuals on their blogs, startups who are going all-in with YUI as the foundation of their frontend architecture, and Fortune 500 companies using YUI as a trusted, tested, long-view toolkit for creating great user-experiences on the Web.

Microsoft disclosed late Thursday that Jeff Raikes, the head of its Office operation, second only to Windows in bringing in revenue, was retiring and will be replaced by Stephen Elop, 44, Jupiter Networks' short-term COO. Before Jupiter, Elop was president of worldwide field operations at Adobe by virtue of Adobe's 2005 acquisition of Macromedia, where he was president and CEO. Elop also has experience as a chief information officer. The plan is for Raikes, 49, to hang around until September as a backstop as a member of the senior leadership team for purposes of transition.

Microsoft's latest Google corrective has it buying Norway's troubled publicly traded enterprise data search firm, Fast Search & Transfer ASA, for a lavish $1.2 billion in cash. The buyout price represents a 42% premium over Fast's stock price last Friday and 48 times estimated 2010 earnings. It will be one of Microsoft's pricier acquisitions, demanding upwards of 5% of the loot in its treasury or three weeks worth of free cash flow to complete.

The release yesterday of an Alpha version of Jimmy Wales's new Wikia Search project underwhelmed critics. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch called it a 'complete letdown' and even BusinessWeek.com noted that 'Preliminary testing of the site...produced disappointing results consistent with the widespread grumbles.'

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Google's new-year special logo, which went live briefly as 2008 began, celebrated the 25th anniversary of TCP/IP - adopted by Arpanet on January 1st, 1983. While 'invisible' to most users, many of the layers built on top of TCP/IP are well-known even to laymen: HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), FTP (the File Transfer Protocol), SMTP and POP3, and IRC.

Google's Knol sounds like a knee-jerk reaction and retaliation to Jimmy Wales' public insults and threaths for more than a year. At least that's the common perception out there. Blogger Michael Arrington writes: 'Knol is not much different than existing products. It's a new knowledge base for authors. Anyone, eventually, will be able to write on any topic they choose. Google will provide authoring tools, store the information, allow others to comment and suggest edits, add ads with the author's approval, and provide traffic via their search engine. ... It's much more likely that Google is jealously eyeing the massive traffic that flows through its search engine to Wikipedia.'

IBM Research Labs has pushed out free e-mail search software called OmniFind Personal Email Search (IOPES) to find information buried, it says, in the 'vast personal database that e-mail has become.'

Adobe and Yahoo have launched a beta Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo! so online publishers can stick context-based ads in a panel next to PDF content for incremental revenue from Yahoo. The context ads are dynamically matched to the content of the documents. Adobe does the inserting. The text ads, brought through Yahoo's self-service ad system, are only seen in Adobe Reader and Acrobat. The program is free in English and available only in the US.

Norwegian browser maker Opera Software ASA has complained to the European Commission that Microsoft is abusing its dominant position by tying its Internet Explorer browser to the Windows operating system and hindering interoperability by not following accepted Web standards. It wants IE unbundled or Windows to preinstall competitive browsers on the desktop. And - and this seems extraordinary even for Europeans - it wants the EC to compel Microsoft to support open web standards 'accepted by the web-authoring communities.'

In keeping with the longstanding SYS-CON tradition of being at the very forefront of software development with all its online and offline resources, SYS-CON Media & Events jointly today announced a double whammy, launching both 'Open Web Developer's Journal' (htt p://openweb.sys-con.com) and 'Open Web Developer Summit' (http://openweb.s ys-con.com) - to be held for the first time in New York City April 21-22, 2008.

My seven-year-old daughter thinks that there is a knowledge genie that her teacher 'Googles' for answers. While cute, the anecdote also exemplifies how much Google's obsession with simplicity has helped build brand awareness, making their name literally synonymous with search. I can foresee generations X and Y being followed by generation S - one that will rely on search to accomplish almost any task.

Dr. Li Gong, co-chairman of the Chinese subsidiary of the Mozilla Corporation, has announced a deal with Chinese search engine Baidu to help propagate the Firefox browser in the Middle Kingdom. From now on, China's domestic users who install the latest version of the Firefox browser (2.0.0.10) can enjoy the service.

Since Ed Zander led Sun into the valley of the shadow of death back, what? over five years ago now, it has never recovered. And there's a good chance the same thing may happen to Motorola. With a year left to run on his contract, Zander quit yesterday and clearly not a moment too soon given the events of the last year or so. There are people who would have gladly ridden him out of town on a rail months ago and it's assumed he's resigning now to avoid getting fired. Zander, whose telecom experience consisted of answering the phone, was brought in four years ago to narrow the lead in phones between a first-place Nokia and a second-place Motorola. Motorola is now in third place, losing ground to both Nokia and Samsung, its market share sheered from 20.7% a year ago to 13.1% now.

Dell is gonna sell Google's search widgets, the $30,000-to-start Google Search Appliance and the $2,000-to-start Google Mini to American companies, large and small. It already sells PCs with Google's desktop search. And now it'll have 2950 servers compatible with the Google Search Appliance. Meanwhile, IBM has upgraded its free year-old OmniFind Yahoo! Edition enterprise search software, which searches the web and local or remote file systems with up to 500,000 documents per instance. It's supposed to separate content into different searchable document collections and improves on the administration console.

Within minutes of my blog entry, I received the strangest email notification, alerting me to another blog written by Alan Zeichick, 'co-founder and editorial director of BZ Media, which publishes SD Times and Software Test & Performance, and which also produces the Software Security Summit, Software Test & Performance Conference, and EclipseWorld. Also president and principal analyst of Camden Associates.' That's what his bio says.

Credit Suisse has pushed its 12-month price target on Google from $800 to $900, causing the stock to regain some of the 125 bucks it's lost to the market roiling since Google grazed $750 earlier this month. Most of Wall Street believes in its heart that Google will see a dizzying $1,000 but few have written it down. Credit Suisse analyst Heath Terry believes Google will drive out all contenders and effectively own 100% of search, which he describes as a 'natural monopoly,' and that all advertising, including TV, radio and outdoor, will eventually go digital using Google as its 'de facto operating system.' He is figuring on upwards of 35% sales growth over the next five years and at least 30% earnings growth.

Remember that $3.9 million that Google dropped into co-founder Sergey Brin's fiancée's start-up right before they were married? Well, as of Monday said start-up, 23andMe, is peddling $999 DNA saliva tests so people can find out about their ancestry, inherited traits and - eventually - disease risks. The data comes back via a supposedly secure online account four to six weeks later. Genentech and New Enterprise Associates are also investors.

The Federal Trade Commission has heard from two US senators on the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights subcommittee, chairman Herb Kohl (D) and ranking minority member Orrin Hatch (R), urging it to redouble its scrutiny of the Google-DoubleClick deal out of concern for both competition and privacy. Not that they've taken a position or anything - they said - but the letter says, 'Antitrust regulators need to be wary to guard against the creation of a powerful Internet conglomerate able to extend its market power in one market into adjacent markets to the detriment of competition and consumers.'

The European Commission has decided not to stint on its investigation of the proposed Google-DoubleClick merger and, beginning Tuesday, is treating it to a rare in-depth review that will take until April 2. The move raises the hopes of GoogleClick critics like Microsoft that the $3.1 billion acquisition will ultimately be blocked. Alternately, it could be weighted down with conditions. The EC's initial probe of the deal reportedly found issues surrounding 'intermediation and ad serving in online advertising.'

It also talked to Jarg co-founder Michael Belanger. He told Reuters that he's been sitting on the claims for years for lack of money but then found a law firm - Texas-based Vinson & Elkins - willing to take the case on contingency. They're seeking damages and royalties. Jarg's other co-founder and CTO, Northeastern associate professor Kenneth Baclawski holds the patent in question, No 5,694,593, 'Distributed Computer Database System and Method.'

Here are my thoughts on this. I was expecting Alfred - who is known to be an arrogant and incompetent CEO - to run away from Larry as fast as he could. But this movie usually ends as follows. First, history repeats itself. By that I mean that Alfred should remember Larry's PeopleSoft hunt, which ended up with the PeopleSoft's CEO's head on a stick. In my humble opinion, in Act 2 of Larry's BEA hunt, we will see Alfred's head on a stick and the BEA shareholders will make the wedding plans, as always happens when Larry plans another marriage for his baby Oracle.

I asked what she did for a living. She said she was a software engineer working with SOA. I did not think about my plane ride much until I arrived in San Francisco to attend the SOA World Conference & Expo this past Monday and Tuesday. The first day of the conference as I walked into the hotel, guess who I saw? My friend who I met on the Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul. What a small world, isn't it? Her company was one of the sponsors of the event.

The three-year-old Dojo Foundation has put out version 1.0 of Dojo, an open source JavaScript toolkit for AJAX development meant for building rich Web 2.0 applications without proprietary plug-ins or single-vendor solutions. The widgetry makes use of Google Gears, Google's solution for making applications work both on- and offline. What Dojo calls Dojo Offline is based on it. The toolkit is all of 25K in size and supports progressive enhancement and animations and is supposed to open the door to a wealth of high-quality widgets and extension modules. Dojo also supports the Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera browsers and the OpenAjax Alliance Hub 1.0 to guarantee interoperability with other toolkits IBM, Sun, BEA and AOL are Dojo backers.

Microsoft has pulled the search widgetry out of SharePoint Server 2007 and turned it into a standalone Search Server 2008 Express that it will make available as a free download. It says information workers waste as much as 9.5 hours a week on searches that don't turn up the right information. So far it's got a release candidate at www.microsoft.com/ente rprisesearch. Microsoft expects to bait customers with the upward-compatible Search Server 2008 Express and then scale them up to Search Server 2008 or Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Watching VMware stock and its market cap spike since it IPO'd must have had Red Hat positively pea green with envyWatching VMware stock and its market cap spike since it IPO'd must have had Red Hat positively pea green with envy - so green in fact that it's gonna try taking VMware on by pushing the Xen virtualization integrated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Red Hat's new goal is to underpin 50% of the world's servers by 2015. And since virtualization is projected to take over the world by then that's a lot of Xen virtualization - and there's no extra cost in it like there is with VMware since it's bundled with RHEL. (Red Hat's telling people they'll save $20,000-$30,000 a server.) Red Hat claims it's got its first 18,000 virtualized servers - although it's a little fuzzy about whether those 18,000 are actually in production - anyway, it's confident they'll get there eventually after all the testing and evaluating is done.