New York -- In an effort to reinforce trust with its users, search engine pioneer Yahoo! Inc. has thrown down the gauntlet to bitter rivals Google and Microsoft yesterday by revamping its global data retention policy the shortest among peers, promising to anonymize the personal data of Web users to 90 days from the previous 13 months, half the period stipulated by the EU, the company said on Wednesday.

“According to the new policy, Yahoo! will anonymize user log data within 90 days with limited exceptions for fraud, security and legal obligations,” Yahoo! said in a move it said “sets an industry-leading approach to user data privacy.”

Significantly, Yahoo has also expanded the scope of the data that is covered by its new privacy policy to include information about which websites its users visit and the adverts they see and click on.

San Francisco -- Just about a year after outgoing CEO Jerry Yang envisioned for a “New Yahoo,” and since months of preamble, Yahoo on Monday flipped the on switch for a massive project to begin interlacing trendy social-networking features into its popular free email service as it vies to be the preferred launching point for Internet surfers.

“Blitz of breathtaking announcements for Mail and home page fills out Yahoo’s ‘open’ social Web strategy.”

The Web pioneer unveiled a new toolbar that delivers on a major new look for its venerable Home Page and popular Yahoo Mail service at a press event here, giving users access to their e-mail as they surf the Web, the latest step in its strategy to make its products more open to users and third parties.

Sunnyvale, Calif., -- Struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc., attempting to chart a new course in a troubled economy, started issuing pink slips Wednesday to the iniquitous list of 1,500 employees worldwide, majority of whom will be affected by its previously announced 10 percent job cut and slash costs by about $400 million a year, the company confirmed.

While reports are buzzing about a prospective successors to chief executive Jerry Yang and a major investor expressed hope of reviving talks with Microsoft, but the internet giant under extreme pressure has swung the job axe across all departments at Yahoo!, with human resources and finance workers reportedly expected to take the biggest hit.

San Francisco -- Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn, who lobbied for a Microsoft Corp. takeover earlier this year, wishes to reap profit from his $1.8 billion bet on Yahoo Inc., held talks with the software company about a purchase of Yahoo’s Internet search business, without reaching an agreement, according to a regulatory filing.

The billionaire desperately needs the besieged Internet Company’s stock to more than double in value. In addition, the filing also indicates that Icahn -- who now sits on Yahoo!’s board -- purchased about 6.78 million additional Yahoo! shares last week.

Icahn, who steered his way on to Yahoo’s board during the summer, has paid an average of $23.59 per share to accumulate a 5.5 percent stake in the Sunnyvale-based company, according to a Thursday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

San Francisco -- Another Internet radio fatality due to escalating royalty fees for airing music online. Yahoo’s Launchcast streaming radio service, once considered one of the titans in the streaming music space, is planning to transfer control to CBS Corp.’s webcasting network in a move driven by dramatically higher fees for airing music online.

Yahoo’s radio channel, called Launchcast, will combine with CBS beginning in February.

Under a deal very much similar to that between CBS Radio and Launchast rival AOL Radio, CBS Radio is taking over all advertising-sales operations, licensing and technology decisions for the Launchcast service. That includes replacing the Launchcast desktop music player with a co-branded one provided by CBS.

San Francisco -- In a move expected to fuel speculation over Yahoo Inc.’s search for a new chief executive -- Corporate raider and billionaire investor Carl Icahn augmented his stake in Yahoo, has bought up close to 7 million additional shares of the Internet Company over three days this week, paying around $67 million, according to regulatory filings.

Icahn, a billionaire hedge-fund manager who now holds a seat on Yahoo’s board, acquired 6.77 million additional shares of Yahoo stock during November 24-26 for 67 million dollars, now owns 75.6 million of the company’s shares, or a 5.4 percent stake valued at around $870 million based on Yahoo’s closing share price on Friday, according to the documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and dated Wednesday.

London -- Yahoo Inc. last week agreed to alliance with Virgin Media Inc. under which Yahoo! oneSearch will exclusively power the Internet search experience on Virgin Media’s 4 million mobile subscribers in the U.K. Yahoo has managed to succeed Google in securing this new deal as they wish to stay competitive in the mobile search and advertising market.

The Virgin Media mobile portal will become accessible to consumers from the 8th of December, 2008 and will contribute with relevant information on almost any topic –- from news, video, games and entertainment, financial information, weather conditions, Flickr photos and lottery results, to Web and mobile web sites, travel information, integrated information from Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers, in addition to Yahoo!’s award-winning mobile search experience, straight to consumers’ pockets.

New York -- Besieged Internet Search Company Yahoo! Inc., confronted with fainted hopes for a takeover by Microsoft Corp., amidst a fresh wave of media reports, is in negotiations to buy Time Warner Inc.’s AOL business, the financial news agency Bloomberg reported last week, quoting unidentified sources, said executives of Yahoo and Time Warner have been meeting over several weeks, but have not finalized the terms.

The Bloomberg report surfaced just days after Yahoo announced that Chief Executive Jerry Yang is resigning and Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer repeated that he would be open to a deal for Yahoo’s search business, but not an outright acquisition.

Sunnyvale, Calif., -- Yahoo, that purchased European comparison-shopping site service Kelkoo for about 475 million euros ($579 million) four years ago, has reportedly disposed of its wholly owned subsidiary for less than 100 million euros to U.K. private-equity firm “Jamplant” this holiday shopping season, Kelkoo founder and former chief executive Pierre Chappaz said Friday.

Chappaz wrote about the deal (in French) on his blog but again, Yahoo has not confirmed anything yet officially.

Robert adds: Yahoo UK confirmed the sell off to us. First sign of the sell-off came when Yahoo re-tooled Kelkoo’s Grenoble, France, HQ in September as an R&D centre. Chappaz refused to name the price but said it was “below 100 million euros” - that means Yahoo makes a loss of at least 375m ($472m) euros (not including any profits in made in that time, of course). Chappaz said: “The difference is the price of management incompetence that led Yahoo’s (stock price to fall) below $9.”

Sunnyvale, Calif. -- Yahoo has scored another wireless conquest for its mobile Internet search tool. Yahoo and T-Mobile jointly announced Thursday that Yahoo’s “oneSearch” mobile search tool will be the default mobile engine to power Internet search made through T-Mobile’s new “Web2go” service, bringing the number of wireless providers using oneSearch to more than 70.

T-Mobile said Yahoo’s oneSearch will supply web2go users with a better Web -browsing experience “by offering easier to view and navigate the Web through a customizable home page,” as well a simplified shopping and download experience. Unlike on a PC, T-Mobile web2go users would not need to drill down to find data.

San Francisco -- Scoffed for messing up the Microsoft acquisition offer and an abortive search deal with Google, Yahoo! Inc.’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang, under fierce financial pressure, is stepping down as CEO after 16 tumultuous months at the helm of the struggling online giant as soon as the board finds a replacement, sending shares up 4 percent on hopes the departure would clear the way for a deal with Microsoft, the company said Monday.

Yahoo said Yang, who co-founded the popular Web portal in 1995 at the age of 26 with Stanford University classmate David Filo, would step down as soon as the board of directors finds a new chief executive.

“Yang and the Board have had an ongoing discussion about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the appropriate time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level,” Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock said.

New York -- Yahoo is at it again, having bundled with problems running its business and keeping good people, the company continues to take on risky proposition: Yahoo! is quietly updating its homepage, which went into testing a couple months ago. The redesign effort also overlaps with the new user interface, YUI 3.

CEO Jerry Yang speaks about making Yahoo the starting point for the Web and about making Yahoo’s pages more open on the Web while also displaying Yahoo!’s commitment to openness. The latest redesigning of the Yahoo homepage takes advantage of a new YUI 3, a framework for building user interfaces and will allow users and developers to customize the page.

San Francisco -- Yahoo has unveiled an improved version of its “Google Gears” competitor -- BrowserPlus, which enables web applications developers to use it on their own Web sites, rolled out two cool new features today: Enhanced drag-and-drop file uploads and desktop notifications.

Yahoo claims that it has improved its BrowserPlus technology for more sophisticated Web applications and now empowers other Web sites besides its own use it, the company said.

BrowserPlus is akin to Google’s Gears, is software that can be plugged into a person’s Web browser to make Web-based applications work more like native desktop programs.

San Francisco -- Yahoo Inc. this week announced that it has introduced a bunch of new social attributes to the beta version of its Yahoo Buzz social news site, which lets people spotlight and find interesting news stories and blog posts based on user votes and search patterns, is now getting a piece of the “Yahoo Open Strategy” action with the new Yahoo universal profiles that makes it look even more similar to Digg.

A new Updates portion on Yahoo Buzz site now lets users to more easily discover content their friends have Buzzed, Yahoo said. Additionally, people can share a personalized Buzz page that shows activity such as what sites they have buzzed, and Yahoo has also added a commenting system relatively similar to that of Digg, which lets users reply to and provide a thumbs up or thumbs down to the comments of other users, along with threaded replies.

San Francisco -- Yahoo Inc., owner of the second most popular U.S. Internet search site, on Monday said that it has hired former Microsoft Corp. executive Jeff Dossett to run the Internet giant’s news and entertainment sites in the United States. And as it seemed that the great Yahoo exodus had finally ended, Scott Moore, head of Yahoo!’s media business, and Al Warms, general manager of Yahoo! News, will be announcing their departures later this week, according to several sources with knowledge of the situation confirm that report at AllThingsDigital.com, a Wall Street Journal affiliate.

Dossett, Yahoo’s new senior vice president, U.S. Audience, will be responsible for continuing Yahoo’s success in delivering large audiences during a prolonged rocky period at the company, while also facing a Web universe that is gradually becoming less portal-centric.

San Francisco -- Yahoo last week released phase one dubbed “universal profile,” and now it plans to release phase two of its new application platform this week, when Web developers can begin sinking their teeth into Yahoo’s attempt to replace its present static design with one that is customizable, application-rich, socially connected, and woven into other parts of the Internet.

In the coming months, the open software platform is expected to reach Yahoo’s home page and Yahoo Mail, part of an effort to attract more visitors by adding Facebook-like social networking features to Yahoo’s Web sites.

On Friday at Yahoo’s San Francisco satellite office, known as the Brickhouse, a group of Yahoo executives and product managers presented a preview of Y!OS, Yahoo’s Open Strategy. It is “a centralized control panel that enables you to administer your identity, activities, interests, and connections across Yahoo -- and eventually the entire Web,” as Jim Stoneham, Yahoo’s VP of communities, put it in a blog post.

La Vista, Nebraska -- In a move that has left many fretting their brains, Yahoo Inc. on Friday unveiled plans to build two new office facilities in Nebraska -- just three days after the California-based Internet company reported a whopping 64 percent plunge in third quarter net income and a reduction of at least 1,500 workers in order to cut costs as it deals with the economic downturn.

Gov. Dave Heineman and corporate officials announced that Yahoo! has chosen Nebraska as the place of two new developments. A 150,000 square ft. Yahoo! Data Center will be located in LaVista. A Yahoo! Customer Care Center will be located in Omaha.

New York -- Yahoo! Inc. is poised to announce a content-licensing agreement with Waterfront Media’s Everyday Health Network, which has recently merged with Steve Case’s Revolution Health Network, and is challenging WebMD to become the top online health-information company.

Under the agreement, Yahoo! Health will receive content from several of the Everyday Health portfolio of health sites, such as WhatToExpect.com, a site of the bestselling series of What To Expect pregnancy and parenting books, JillianMichaels.com of NBC’s The Biggest Loser, SouthBeachDiet.com from the best selling diet book of all time, and RevolutionHealth.com.

Yahoo, this week has launched a more precise geo-targeting options, giving advertisers the ability to target ads by ZIP code rather than just by city and state.

This new tool will empowers search ad campaign managers to refine their search campaigns by selecting specific areas that their ads are aiming to reach.

The ZIP code targeting feature analyzes a searcher’s Internet Protocol (IP) address and manually-input user data, and then serves ads based on their location.

According to the Yahoo Search Marketing blog, the geo-targeting system would utilize users’ search queries, IP addresses and other information that pinpoints their location as well as which ads Yahoo search will serve them. This new system is intended to give advertisers more relevant clicks for their ads and eventually sales since these ad campaigns are assured of reaching their desired audiences.

San Francisco -- Yahoo Inc., the Internet Company that early this year spurned a takeover bid from Microsoft Corp., announced plans on Tuesday to axe at least 10 per cent of its workforce to cope with a crumbling economy that dented its third-quarter profit falling to 64 per cent turning up the heat on the slumping Web company’s management as investors stew over a missed opportunity to sell to Microsoft Corp. for $47.5 billion.

The jobs cuts are worse than feared, the company declared that third quarter profits dropped by 64 per cent to $54.3 million compared with $151.3 million last year. It said revenues were 1.78 billion dollars in the third-quarter, an addition of only one per cent over the 1.76 billion dollars in the same period last year.