In the second week of May there was a big news about a big offer made by Microsoft to buy over Yahoo. Has the deal been closed? I have not received any news on this.
Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo for USD$50billion
HardWareZone | 10 May, 2007 12:50
If you haven't heard about this, you might want to now! Microsoft, the maker of the recent Windows 6 (Vista) Operating System, wants to buy its online rival Yahoo, for a staggering USD$50billion!
This isn't the first time Microsoft has made an offer to Yahoo - they're refused before - but Microsoft is hoping the higher USD$50billion is going to change the yodelling online giant's mind. In the online space where Google buys YouTube and Newscorp buys MySpace, the best method to eliminate your enemy is to just buy them over.
With Yahoo Messenger 8 being able to use MSN Messenger (or Windows Live Messenger since version 8) user names, the battle between the top IM (Instant Messengers) just got tougher for Microsoft. Since Microsoft isn't the kind to allow you to use Windows Live Messenger for your Yahoo IM user name, people just might switch over to Yahoo's IM to use both Yahoo and Microsoft IM user names.
Taking over Yahoo would also increase Microsoft's Web search market share by 38%, putting them right behind Google - Microsoft's ultimate rival. Yahoo's current value is around USD$30 to 40billion - so that's a cool USD$10billion extra to just say yes to Microsoft. Will Yahoo accept it?
There is one subject that is taboo for Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. You can talk to Bill about a lot of things. You can talk to him about the fast pace at which Google is extending its search and advertising
There is one subject that is taboo for Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. You can talk to Bill about a lot of things. You can talk to him about the fast pace at which Google is extending its search and advertising
Internet business while Microsoft is lagging behind. You can mention the muted adoption of Windows Vista. And you can even praise the piracy of Microsoft software products in his presence, just consider the example of Romanian President Traian Basescu.
However, there is one subject that is totally off limits. You cannot speak of it, comment on it and if possible, not even think about it in the presence of Bill Gates. What is it you ask? Well, the Mac ads of course.
It seems that Bill Gates is quite irate with Apple's PC guy vs. Mac guy video commercials that have flooded the Internet. So much so that he fails to retain the high level of diplomacy that characterizes him. At the beginning of February 2007, Gates simply smiled while the President of Romania applauded piracy. But when a journalist mentioned the Mac ads, Bill experienced something close to a blue screen.
Bob Garfield, a columnist with Advertising Age asked Bill Gates to comment on John Hodgman's character PC guy in the Mac ads. Bill Gates refused to answer the question, stating that he could not provide an opinion on Apple's ads. Garfield did not let Gates get off so easily and he raised the stake asking about the resemblance between Gates and PC guy. Gates simply left at this point, and barely managed to utter a “goodbye.”
CYBERSQUATTING The US administration passed the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer protection in August 1999. The law enable trademark holders to obtain civil damages of a maximum amount of USD100k from those that register their trade names or similar-sounding names as domain names. There was a case in 1999 where a domain was sold for one million USD. That domain was registered in 1994 at a cost of USD 70. The domain was wallstreet.com There were people who registered a common name and name combination they can think of with the hope of selling it a exorbitant prices and make a life time killing. Registering an Internet domain name for the purpose to sell later for a profit is termed as Cybersquatting
TYPOSQUATTING
Generally, the victim site of typosquatting will be a frequently visited website. The typosquatter's URL will be similar to the victim site address: Once in the typosquatter's site, the user may also be tricked into thinking that they are in fact in the real site; through the use of copied or similar logos, website layouts or content. Sometimes competitors of the victim site will do this.
Have you ever experience this. Say you have some sticky key. Now it causes you to key into your navigation bar typo errors for example. Instead of spelling blogspot it becomes logspot or in rush we mis-spell it as blogsport. Then you say to yourself why another site appear. Upon checking you discover a spelling error in your navigation bar. Well, that was done by design, read below. (bloggers note)
Typosquatting also called URL hijacking, is a form of cybersquatting which relies on mistakes such as typographical errors made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser. Should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they may be led to an alternative address owned by a cybersquatter.
Alternatively, the user will be forwarded to a site of a completely different nature to what they intended. This tactic was infamously used by John Zuccarini, who redirected domains targeting children to pornographic websites. Sometimes, the typosquatters will use the false addresses to distribute viruses, adware , spyware or other malware. Some are also shock sites. More common are benign domain parking sites, selling advertising to firms based on keywords similar to the misspelled word in the domain.
As with cybersquatting in the past, the term typosquatting has been used by covetous parties in an effort to unseat domain registrants from brandable variants of generic domain names The shortage of poignant and generic domain names in the coveted .com generic top-level domain has left many hopeful registrants with no alternative but to locate catchy variants of existing generic words e.g. Orbitz.com (popular travel site with "z" to replace the "s") in an effort to find "new land" on which to build their website.As in the preceding example the line between typosquatting and registering a brandable variant of a generic domain name blurs dependent on the circumstance of each situation.
A company may try and preempt typosquatting by obtaining a number of websites with common misspellings and redirect them to the main, correctly spelled website. For example www.gooogle.com, www.goolge.com, www.gogle.com www.gewgle.com, and others, all redirect to www.google.com. In another example, actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger is reported to control the domains with the ten most common misspellings of his surname.
Microsoft has released new software to help combat this issue. The software is called "Strider Typo-Patrol". This is a tool that scans and shows third-party domains that are allegedly typosquatting. It also lets parents restrict access to typo-squatting domains that show sexually oriented ads on typos of children's web sites.
"Typosquatting" is a meaningless term where the law is concerned. Laws generally are not concerned about registrations of domain names that are similar to other domain names or similar to existing trademarks, unless some other important factor is involved.
.gif)
