A new service by Microsoft “search via Microsoft Search engine Live and Microsoft will pay you for it”. Okai its not like that they haven’t gone that desperate yet but Microsoft has launched a new service called Live Search Cash back.

The Microsoft cash back offers users to search products using only Microsoft live to look for cash back deals. Each product will list its price along with the cash back offer on that product. Once you purchase that product Microsoft will add the cash back to you account & once it goes above $5 you can get your money back.

Cash Back deals is common in US stores but i guess Microsoft seems to be the first to bring it along to the web. Microsoft is working hard to put a dominant role on the web where so far Google is the king and this step might help out store owners and users to develop a new stream of business.

[http://search.live.com/cashback]

Microsoft “Live Mesh” a data storage Web software system was announced by Microsoft of Tuesday. Live Mesh is a Microsoft’s entry to a rapidly growing market called cloud computing, where software applications & services from PC’s are send to a centralized data centers where they are made available via internet.

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Recently Google Inc. Launched ‘Google Ad Manager’ , which is a bi product of Google’s previous accusation of Double Click for 3.1 billion. Google Ad Manager though currently in a beta phase and for invitation only is quite simple technology that enables publishers to have more options to deploy & manage there Ad’s. Recently Many publishers were not satisfied with the Adsense and revenue generated with Adsense. For more interactive Ad’s they used to either sign up with companies like Double Click & Federated Media to deliver more Ads targeted directly to there web, or they used to directly deal with advertisers for ad deployment on there website. Keeping this industry problem Google presented the world with Google Ad Manager which will definitely centralize the control of Advertisement on the web. So lets see what exactly Google Ad Manager is.
What is Google Ad Manager ?
Google Ad Manager provides an easy to use tool for Publishers to define Ad spots on there web properties where they can place ads by either directly dealing with there Advertisers. As the Google Ad Manager comes pack with statistics for the Ad i.e is Impressions, click through rate hence publishers would be able to bring there direct advertisers to those rates as well. Apart from that incase the publisher does not have ads for there spot on the web, then the Google Ad Manager will display Google Adsense Ads or other Ad Network Ads. Some of the key features

• Inventory management
• Yield optimization
• Ad targeting
• Trafficking, ad delivery, and order booking
• Creatives and rich media management
• Reporting
• User interface navigation
• Account administration

Keeping the launch of Google Ad Manager, Microsoft could not let this portion of net un avaided and today Microsoft Annouced the accusation of RAPT.

Rapt is yet another powerful Ad Management application. Though these accusations & launch clearly indicate the growth of Online Advertisement, where the power of Ad selection has been provided to publishers and Advertisers using the strong foundation of Statistics & Impression based stats & charging to further increase & enhance the Ad revenue.

In the January 2008 analysis of the Top 50 properties worldwide where search activity is observed, Google Sites led with 7.7 billion searches. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with nearly 2.5 billion searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (1.1 billion), and AOL LLC (903 million).

Google Sites marginally extended its share of core searches to 58.5 percent. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 22.2 percent, followed by Microsoft Sites (9.8 percent), AOL LLC (4.9 percent), and Ask Network (4.5 percent).

Previously Yahoo after a week of it initial statement gave clean statements that it would reject Microsoft’s Offer and set up an alliance with Google. According to tech crunch Yahoo board met secretly on Friday to discuss and made a decision on the Microsoft Offer. According to latest releases Yahoo have decided to reject Microsoft’s offer this has been verified by a publication by Wall Street Journal, According to wall street Journal Yahoo will be sending a formal letter to Microsoft declining there offer by Monday.

The reason for rejection is simple Yahoo considers that Microsoft has undervalued Yahoo assets and have placed a bid that is lower then that expected by Yahoo, in simple terms Yahoo have decided to accepted the offer by Microsoft if the value of bid is increased 12 billion to 56.6 billion dollars i.e. $40 a share.

Now the balls are in the court of Microsoft if they can jump up 12 more billion into this accusation they would gain control of Yet another powerful heritage of the Web.

I predict the accusation will take place and Yahoo will be accquired by Microsoft, Microsoft CEO ‘Steve Ballmer’ has also
mentioned that if the accusation of Yahoo takes place the brand of Yahoo will live only powered by Microsoft. Some predict that Microsoft will shut down MSN or Hotmail and merge them to Yahoo but i have my doubts as Microsoft will keep them both alive and in competition with each other…. and with Google.

Sunday Feb 3rd 2008
Yahoo Inc would consider a business alliance with Google Inc as one way to rebuff a $44.6 billion takeover proposal by Microsoft, a source familiar with Yahoo’s strategy said on Sunday. Yahoo management is considering revisiting talks it held with Google several months ago on an alliance as an alternative to Microsoft’s bid, that source said. At $31 a share, Yahoo believes the bid undervalues the company, two sources said.
Source : Yahoo News

This statement by Yahoo Inc. clearly represents that they just give a big fat finger to Microsoft Up Yours! Apart from that Yahoo is also considering offers by Apple Computer to come in for the rescue. I still can’t accept the idea that Yahoo would become a part of Microsoft. Its devastating, since ages Yahoo has become a legend of internet, no doubt the company is suffering and is planning to layoff 1000’s of employees but since the old ages there was one site we all knew about and used it as well. Yahoo is the legend of internet, its not the best search engine and neither it has the best Mail servers but still Yahoo is something that reminds us of internet.

Worst case scenario if Microsoft acquires Yahoo what would be left of it, will Microsoft shutdown MSN.com and support Yahoo, will it close its MSN messenger and go for Yahoo Messenger, will msn live be replaced by MyYahoo, i dont think so all the services of Yahoo will be gradulay absorbed inside MSN and the legend of Yahoo will be dead.

The famous Generous Big by Microsoft to acquire Yahoo for 46.5 billion dollars is taking yet another exciting turn, so far the big amount is way beyond its limit which is putting serious concerns on the intentions of Microsoft. The most worried company on this accusation deal is Google as previously Google had two competitors Yahoo & Microsoft when combined together there will be one competition to Google. Today Google released a press statement on which Microsoft responded immediately seems more like a corporate war going open in press check it out below what they have to say.

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With the launch of Windows Vista Microsoft is spreading around the news of yet another launch of Windows 7 by 2009, the news is picking up so much pace that recently a Hoax version of Windows 7 was found over all major torrent sites and those who downloaded found out later that it was just a cute joke.

So far the Windows 7 launch might turn out to be a good strategy, Microsoft Windows Vista didnt do much good to the version, its supper heavy interface too many of Security Alerts and still a bit unstable image didnt go well with the Windows Vista. Though one thing is quite clear and seems quite clean that the Microsoft Windows 7 will be a version of Microsoft Vista with the same functionality, same enhancements just wrapped around a better packing and new marketing campaign.

In Mid of 2007 i switch to Windows Vista as it came pre installed with my laptop, initially windows Vista didn’t perform at any standards, yes the initial looks were good, with shinny bar’s, desktop widgets, wallpapers themes, icons but the problems was that it was very slow in performance, it used to get hang the compute with IE7 and when i started using it i happend to find ouw how bad it sucks in performance.

But with a little support of a technical friend  i ripped off all the junk pre installed softwares, installed Firefox, OpenOffice, and switched the setting to high performance removing all the shinney bar and my problems got solved.

Now whats next we got to see is what will be Windows 7 and IE 8 going to be like on which i will add in my next post.