According to the latest comScore report, search dominator Google continued to do so in the U.S. market, upping its share to 66.4 percent in February, from 66.2 percent in the month before.

This marked the third month Google’s search share rose, improvement also enjoyed by Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Its share rose to 15.3 percent, said comScore, from 15.2 percent in January. That is up from 13.6 percent a year ago.

The rise comes at the expense of Microsoft advertising partner Yahoo, which saw its market share fall to 13.8 percent. It was 14.1 percent a month ago, and 16.1 percent a year ago.

This is, as you might imagine, not good news for Yahoo, which relies on income from its once-mighty search business. It’s better news for Microsoft, of course, although it still pays big-time in costs for the wins it is making from Bing.

A new Nielsen survey confirms that this is the case, with a couple of exceptions. Of 20,000 U.S. mobile phone owners Nielsen surveyed last month, 48 percent said they owned a smartphone, with the 25-to-34 age group making up the largest proportion of smartphone owners, at 66 percent.

But in terms of recent subscribers — those having purchased a smartphone within the past three months — 18- to 24-year-olds are on par with the next-oldest age group in terms of smartphone ownership, and 35- to 44-year-olds are quickly catching up.

A lot of this may have to do with income: As Nielsen notes, when factoring in both age and income, older subscribers with higher incomes are more likely to have a smartphone than older subscribers with lower incomes. For example, 45- to 54-year-olds making more than $100,000 a year are nearly as likely to have a smartphone as a 35-year-old making $75,000 to $100,000 a year; or someone in the age bracket below that, making $35,000 to $50,000 a year.

But 18- to 34-year-olds making $100,000 a year or more are by far the most likely to own smartphones.

An even more interesting extrapolation of data might be what percentage of unemployed youngsters own smartphones, given the high U.S. youth unemployment rate, but all the study notes is that more than half of those making $15,000 or less a year still own the devices.

Nielsen lays this all out in a helpful bar chart, for those who want to see the full breakdown of numbers.

(Photo courtesy of Flickr/Elmarshox)

You would think the settlement of a major dispute would goose the stock of a company, but Yahoo’s deal with its Chinese partner Alibaba Group on Friday did exactly the opposite.

Despite the clearing of an obvious overhang to its shares, the stock of the Silicon Valley Internet giant dropped almost three percent Friday to close at $13.10. While the ongoing federal budget wrangling was partly to blame, it was only a very small part with an overall market decline of under one percent.

A tepid reaction to the deal — in which Yahoo, Alibaba and Japan’s SoftBank came to terms over the spinoff of Alibaba’s Alipay payments unit after much wrangling over the move — came quickly from Wall Street analysts.

A report titled “Yahoo Inc: Alipay Agreement: Better than Nothing, But Not That Great,” by J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth, was typical. Pointing to no clarity on an IPO of the Chinese assets of Alibaba and that “prior to the divestiture, Alibaba Group owned 100% of Alipay and all of its income, which is now reduced to 37.5% ownership of Alipay and 49.9% share of the pre-tax income,” he noted that Wall Street “has recently assigned no value to Yahoo!’s share of the asset.”

Well, less than zero, if the stock decline is taken into account, which means Yahoo’s market cap is now just over $17 billion.

According to sources close to the situation, especially since Yahoo’s Asian assets make up more than $9 billion of that valuation, private equity investors and others are pulling out their spreadsheets once again about a possible takeover or privatizing of Yahoo.

Several months ago, for example, former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin had been contemplating a friendly bid with partners such as Providence Equity Partners and others. While there have been rumors recently that he has reengaged in that effort, that is unclear.

Sources also note that Yahoo’s top execs, especially CEO Carol Bartz, and also members of its board, are perplexed that the settlement in China — a positive development — had the opposite effect on the stock.

It’s part of a continuing decline. Yahoo shares are down almost 26 percent in the past three months. Most Web stocks — such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft — are strongly up in that period. The only other obvious laggard is AOL, which is down almost 16 percent in the past three months.

Yahoo, SoftBank and the Alibaba Group have reached an agreement in their contentious dispute around the Alipay payments unit.

The trio have been in extended talks since Alibaba’s CEO Jack Ma spun Alipay out from Alibaba without the approval of Yahoo and Japan’s SoftBank, which own large stakes in Alibaba.

At the time, he said he did so in order to get critical regulatory approvals from the Chinese government. The move prompted an ugly fight between Alibaba and its partners.

In a statement, the trio said:

“The agreement is consistent with the two agreed-upon principles established at the outset of the negotiations: structure the inter-company relationship between Alipay and Taobao in order to preserve the value within Taobao and, by extension, within Alibaba Group; and provide that Alibaba Group is appropriately compensated for the value of Alipay.”

Under terms of the agreement, the three companies said that Alipay will continue providing payment services to Alibaba’s Taobao commerce site and other subsidiaries; Alibaba will be paid almost half of Alipay’s pretax income; and Alibaba will get between $2 billion and $6 billion — or 37.5 percent of the total equity value — in the event of an Alipay IPO or other liquidity event.

Yahoo has also filed a very detailed account of the deal here with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which you can read here and especially here.

Yahoo’s stock has risen 3.6 percent on the news so far this morning, but it is still just below $14 a share.

There will be a call at 5:45 am PT to explain it all, which I will be liveblogging, but here’s the full press release:

alipay

They’ve been working on this particular scam for many months. Jeff Horne, director of threat research for anti-virus vendor Webroot, says an email account he set up to attract and study these types of email has received over one million phony tax-related messages since November.

These cyber-crooks also begin publishing malicious sites early in the tax season, with pages that allow people to download IRS forms for filing. “They automatically deliver the malware without you even realizing it,” said Horne. Whether delivered via email or a visit to a malicious site, the viruses lurk on your hard drive looking for keywords related to tax filing, such as social security numbers, street addresses, employer names and income, and then sends it back to the cyber-crooks.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Nestled within that amount was $350 million to draw a map showing a detailed, block-by-block inventory of the existing broadband infrastructure in the U.S. It took two years, but the results were unveiled by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration today on the Web site Broadbandmap.gov.

This is far from the first time someone has tried to tackle the problem of mapping existing broadband pipes in order to show where service is lacking. But prior attempts have generally been haphazard because service providers tend to carefully guard the precise maps of their physical plant as competitively sensitive. And prior federal efforts fell short because the maps were based on ZIP codes. If one person in some geographically large but sparsely populated rural ZIP code had access to service, prior federal maps showed that area as “served,” even if the majority of the population didn’t have access. The new map uses the far more granular census tracts.

The map shows some new data that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been following the saga of broadband in America: Anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of Americans lack access to broadband at acceptable speeds. Recall that the Federal Communications Commission last July set a benchmark of 4 megabits per second downstream and 1 MBPS upstream as what it considers acceptable.

Another key finding is that so-called “community anchor institutions” are going without adequate access to broadband. These are schools, libraries and hospitals, where different kinds of services are needed. As a rule of thumb, a school needs about 50 to 100 MBPS for every 1,000 students, and most of the schools surveyed had speeds of 25 MBPS or less, and precious few libraries reported speeds approaching that.

When residential service isn’t available, these are the institutions that people turn to when they need to use the Internet. A few years ago I visited a rural county in Tennessee where the local library had broadband and provided free wireless. If you watched the parking lot after the library was closed you’d often see people pull their cars up with laptops and use the Wi-Fi to work on homework assignments with the kids. Even the local sheriff’s deputies would pull up and use it to check their email.

There was some good news. Alongside the map, the NTIA released a separate report on broadband adoption. It found that 68 percent of households have access to a cable modem, a DSL line or a home fiber connection, up from less than 64 percent a year ago. The usual demographic disparities remain: People living on low incomes or with disabilities, along with seniors, minorities and those with low educational attainment, tend to lag behind other groups in home access. The city-country divide remains as well: 70 percent of city dwellers, versus 60 percent of rural residents, access broadband at home.

But here’s a stat that should surprise you: 28.3 percent of all the people in the nation do not use the Internet, period. That’s down about two percentage points from a year ago, but still means that out of every 25 Americans, seven don’t use the Internet at all. I don’t know about you, but that surprises me.

Investors hoping Yahoo might benefit from the same surge in online display advertising spending that drove Google to its recent big quarter are in luck–except for the big-quarter part.

Posting fourth-quarter earnings today after sacking one percent of its staff, the company reported net income of 24 cents per share on revenue of $1.21 billion. The Street doesn’t seem convinced, though. Yahoo shares are down 3.5 percent as I write this.

Analysts had been expecting earnings of 22 cents per share on $1.19 billion in net revenue–a big jump from the 11 cents per share the company reported in the same period last year, but a troubling decline from the $1.26 billion in net revenue that accompanied it. That said, display advertising did grow. For the current quarter, the company sees revenue in a range of $1.02 billion to $1.08 billion; analysts had been looking for $1.13 billion.

“We just completed a very encouraging quarter and year for Yahoo!, where we saw our plans to turn around the company gain momentum,” CEO Carol Bartz said in a canned statement. “For the year, operating income, margins, EPS, and return on invested capital doubled. Display advertising grew 17 percent. We completed the important North America Search transition to Microsoft on schedule and with high quality. We introduced new and updated products at a faster pace. And our content properties–like Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Finance–continued to innovate and extend their massive lead.”

Look for more coverage of the earnings call at BoomTown later this afternoon. Meanwhile, here’s the press release in full:

YHOO_Q410PressRelease_Final

(Also, you can see a slide deck of the financials here.)

[Image Credit: Byzantin3]

The Kayak iPad app

Kayak had revenue of $128 million for net income of $6.2 million through Sept. 30 of this year, up from $86.6 million in revenue and net income of $10.4 million last year. The company significantly increased its marketing spending in that period to $69.1 million from $36.0 million. It has been profitable since 2008.

Kayak is in a bit of a precarious position, since it licenses fare information from ITA Software, which Google has agreed to buy. This is a significant expense; Kayak said in the filing it expects to pay ITA $21 million from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2012. The company admitted that Google messing with ITA could have a “significant negative effect” on its business.

However, Kayak sought to declare its independence from search, saying very little of its traffic comes from Google and the like. The company contended this is because its users are loyal to its brand. So far this year, 72 percent of Kayak queries came from direct visitors to its site, 15 percent from advertising and only eight percent from users referred by search engines. Kayak had 469 million user queries through Sept. 30, with year-over-year growth of 37 percent.

Kayak also has a contract to show Google ads. The filing reports that 15 percent of Kayak advertising revenue so far this year has come from Google, and eight percent of total revenue (the other source of Kayak revenues is referrals).

Kayak is trying to push itself as a mobile growth story, with four million downloads of its mobile apps so far. The company had joked earlier this month that it was putting out its own phone (riffing on rumors of a “Facebook phone”) called the KPHONE and including features like an “actual igniting signal flare” and automatically dialing of your mom every 15 minutes “because you are a terrible person and seriously you never call.” Obviously that sense of humor doesn’t come through in the S-1.

He thinks SecondMarket–best known for its facilitation of trading of private tech company stock–is a way to bring back a human touch. SecondMarket doesn’t necessarily replace an IPO.

But for companies like Facebook, LinkedIn and eSolar, SecondMarket trading slots into a pre-IPO dead zone driven by the longer average time to a public offering–now something like 8.8 years.

“Private to public in the past was like a light switch,” Silbert said at a Startup2Startup dinner in Palo Alto, Calif., last night. “It should be more of a dial.”

So, SecondMarket has facilitated $261 million worth of shares exchanged this year for 40 companies, compared to $96 million for all of last year driven primarily by Facebook, Zynga and LinkedIn.

SecondMarket works directly with these companies to set the terms of their own market on its system: For example, who can buy shares and when, if and when they can resell them, and whether insider trading is prohibited.

While outside investors obviously don’t have the same level of financial insight into a company as they would in the public markets, SecondMarket’s inventory consists of closely watched companies. Plus, it’s set up to attract very interested and agreeable investors, Silbert claimed. SecondMarket’s fees are quite high: Two to four percent of a transaction, with an average of $1 million to $1.5 million spent per deal.

As SecondMarket is evolving alongside the companies in its marketplace, here are some trends Silbert said he is seeing:

• Some participating companies use SecondMarket to reduce their number of shareholders so they have the breathing room to award more common stock to new people without triggering the SEC’s reporting obligations for companies with 500 shareholders.
• Rather than adopting conventional trading hours, some companies are setting specific time periods when their shares can be sold. SecondMarket is encouraging companies to set up a Dutch auction, where everybody who participates clears the same price.
• Silbert said that as a rule of thumb, the 40 companies currently trading on SecondMarket have raised Series C funding, have a valuation of at least $150 million, have more than 50 shareholders and have high growth. He said he sees an opportunity for investors to create funds to invest across the board. “Of the 40 companies, every single one of them has gone up in a pretty significant way. There’s a lot of money to be made here. Right now it’s just for accredited investors, but this is where the returns are.”
• Some companies are offering employees “hypothecation” plans: Funding loans to exercise options so employees can set themselves up to pay long-term capital gains instead of regular income. Silbert jokingly described this as a way to “basically screw the IRS.”

Earnings per share were 62 cents on revenue of $16.2 billion, better than the 55 cents per share on $15.8 billion in revenue that analysts had been expecting. Net income spiked from $3.57 billion in the same quarter a year ago to $5.41 billion in the current one, bolstered by strong sales of Windows 7 and Office 2010. And pretty much all of the company’s divisions showed significant growth.

• Revenue at Microsoft’s Windows division rose to $4.8 billion from $2.9 billion, with a profit of $3.3 billion.
• Revenue at the company’s business unit, which includes Microsoft Office, rose to $5.1 billion from $4.5 billion. Profit was $3.4 billion.
• Revenue at its Entertainment and Devices Division rose to $1.7 billion from $1.5 billion. Profit was $382 million.
• Finally, revenue at Microsoft’s money-losing online services division rose to $527 million from $487 million, though it did post a wider loss of $560 million.

“This was an exceptional quarter, combining solid enterprise growth and continued strong consumer demand for Office 2010, Windows 7 and Xbox 360 consoles and games,” Microsoft CFO Peter Klein said in a statement. “Our ability to grow revenue while continuing to control costs allowed us to deliver another quarter of year-over-year margin expansion.”

Here are the three data points that the search giant showed off during its earnings call this afternoon. All of them “begin with the letter B,” as product SVP Google Jonathan Rosenberg noted, and all of them come with caveats:

• $2.5 billion: Non-text display ad revenue run rate. That number includes ads from its DoubleClick unit as well as YouTube.
• 2 billion: YouTube monetized views per week.
• $1 billion: Mobile annualized revenue run rate.

All of those seem big–and they are! But they’re also deliberately fuzzy enough that it’s hard to tell exactly what they mean.

For instance: As Henry Blodget notes, those display-ad dollars are gross revenue, which means that Google only keeps a portion of them. And while that two billion YouTube views number is up from a billion a year ago, it’s proportionally the same: A year ago YouTube said it was monetizing a billion views a week while serving up a billion views a day; now the video site says two billion views a week and two billion a day.

Meanwhile Google officials, who routinely announce that YouTube is close to profitability, refused to tell analysts whether YouTube is actually profitable.

No matter! The point of b-as-in-big numbers was to impress Wall Street with Google’s ability to create new revenue streams beyond its core search ads. And the data, along with the company’s impressive Q3 performance, seems to have worked: Shares are up nine percent in after-hours trading.

——————

EARLIER

There’s the beat Wall Street was looking for. Google reports earnings of $7.67 a share and net revenues of $5.48 billion. The consensus was for $6.67 and $5.25 billion. GAAP EPS was $6.72.

Google (GOOG) has been plowing money into capital expenditures and people–it now has 23,300 employees, up from 21,800  months ago, a 6.8 percent increase–but it has been able to keep operating income quite healthy, anyway. Adjusted operating income was $2.93 billion, well above the $2.77 billion consensus.

GOOG is up considerably, now seven percent, in after-hours trading. Robot cars for all!

You can listen to (and watch) Google’s 4:30 pm ET earnings call by clicking on this YouTube link. I’ll add updates from the earnings call occasionally starting here:

As in recent quarters, CEO Eric Schmidt is sitting this one out.

CFO Patrick Pichette starts off. Aha! Teases that “we may have” Schmidt available for the first 30 minutes of Q&A before he gets on a GooglePlane.

300 of those new 1,500 employees came from acquisitions.

Discussion of “long-term” growth–”the next 5 to 10 years.” “Simply put, we’re on this growth agenda at full throttle…investing heavily in people and in product.”

There’s a “war for talent” in our industry, which is “out of synch” with the broader economy. Currently exploring how to attract and retain people. Winners and losers determined by this battle.

Re: Product investment, which you’ll hear about from product SVP Jonathan Rosenberg. He’s going to tell you about some numbers, but don’t expect to hear an update on these–they’re merely “proof points” about Google’s success.

Here’s Rosenberg, teasing new previously unreleased numbers.

Here they come. Starting with search and Google Instant:

Impact has been “very minimal” on revenue and “quite expensive” from a resource perspective.

But! “We launched it because we could.”

As search gets better, ads have to keep pace. Great momentum with AdWords.

New ad formats appear on more than 10 percent of query. Some formats show clickthrough rates as much as 10 percent on some, up 30 percent in others.

Big numbers, “which all begin with the letter B.”

$2.5 billion: Non-text display ad revenue run rate. That includes DoubleClick, YouTube.

2 billion: YouTube monetized views per week

$1 billion: Mobile annualized run rate

Mobile search queries up 5 times in the last few years.

Back to Pichette, to tamp down numbers.

In some cases, there is overlap with numbers. For instance, with AdMob, numbers counted in both display and mobile.

Time for Q&A, Schmidt is now on the line.

Schmidt says query growth is pushing click growth, and so are new ad formats. Ads are more compelling, etc.

Pichette notes that AdX numbers are included in the $2.5B display total.

Q: Please talk about YouTube. Of the two billion monetized views, what percent is that of total views? And are you profitable yet?

Pichette: Re: Profitability, “We have not made any comments on it.” [Except of course when they do, over and over.]

Rosenberg: Note that we’ve said we do two billion views per day–that will give you context.

Sorry, missed a Q.

Schmidt says growth of Android is “well past what I had ever hoped for.”

90,000 apps on Android “and growing very fast.”

Question about “proprietary benefits” of Android.

Schmidt: Android is the “largest single platform play” in mobile today.

We’re growing it by giving software away. How does that help us? Well, for starters, people who use Android search two times more than anyone else. Obvious benefit for us there, and search is more lucrative for us there as well, and that makes Android “hugely profitable.”

And we can add other value-added services to Android, but that’s not the focus right now.

Questions on cost: Cost per employee has declined. Can you continue that? And on mobile, will you stay with the “indirect monetization” Android strategy?

Pichette: Wouldn’t read anything into the cost-per-employee numbers. But we’re continuing to be frugal and generous.

Ad boss Nikesh Arora: We’re excited about the revenue model we have. We have no reason to change the model we have with Android.

Schmidt: And display will become a very big component of mobile.

Q: On display, can you break out YouTube and AdX numbers? And what do you think of competitive Android marketplaces?

Pichette: No breakout of numbers. [Duh.]

Schmidt: Goal of the app store is to make money for developers. Not a revenue goal for Google. More stores are a “win for everybody.”

Question about CPC on mobile devices. Rosenberg: They’re lower than desktop, because there aren’t many practical ways to consumate transaction. But on the iPad, activity looks a little bit more like it does on a PC, because there’s more room to enter credit card numbers, etc.

Q: Please discuss cannibalization between smartphone and PC–are iPad and tablet searches incremental or cannibalization? And can you give us color on international 26 percent growth?

Rosenberg: We don’t see cannibalization. We see mobile as complimentary to desktop. Different use patterns–mobile search is on weekends, during lunchtime, etc.

Arora: Generally, trend positive across the board. U.K. a bit weaker, but some of that is FX. Southern Europe way better than Northern. Asian markets robust.

Q: Competitors make $300 profit per handset sold over the lifetime of a device.You’re approaching this with a different model, but do you think that’s an upper limit on that number?

Schmidt: Our model is that handset makers and manufacturers make a lot of money from the phone, and we make money from advertising. So can’t compare the two, and premature for us to guess what we can do. “It should be highly lucrative” and a “very very strong revenue stream compared to a PC.”

Q: On social search. How do you “capture the signal” without access to the data feeds, as you have with Twitter.

Schmidt: “There are some ways we can do that” now, and we’re working on new ways.

Sorry, stepped out. Back now.

Q: TAC rate seems to be lowest since IPO. Sustainable? Growth has been driven by volume, not price. Sustainable, and/or will pricing increase going forward?

Pichette: MySpace deal is now over. That saved us a bunch of money. And mix of our partners will effect our TAC. That’s about it.

Rosenberg: Can’t answer volume/price question without “being forward-looking.” [Heh]

Q: Microsoft/Facebook deal was exclusive. But do you think you’ll see exclusive data deals? And what about Groupon, etc.? Can you compete there?

A: Value of exclusive data is “swamped” by “vastness” of the Web. So no concern there.

Schmidt: Always a concern that large chunks of data are not accessible to search engines….long pause… up to the content owner to decide how much to expose. We believe the world is better off if more information is searchable. “We fundamentally believe that.”

Rosenberg: Daily deals are very exciting. “A lot of small companies doing a fabulous job there.” We participate a little bit via sitelinks. But no question “that’s a very exciting and hot space.”

Q: When will Google Instant be on the BlackBerry or iPhone? What’s Android activation rate? And why not let advertisers bid directly on mobile inventory?

Rosenberg: Instant availability on other platforms “relatively soon”–probably this fall.

Not updating Android activation numbers.

Q: Given that non-core search is more material, do you think you’ll keep allocating resources with your 70-10-10 model? And when do you anticipate mobile overtaking desktop?

Schmidt: On mobile vs. display: Even if we knew I don’t think we’d talk about it.

On core vs. emergent: We talk about this all the time. Depends. Android is very small, and growing fast, so they get all the resources they need. We end up still at 70-10-10, but that’s not really a formula for us.

Pichette: What really matters the most to us is as Eric says, “When you see a hockey stick, pour gasoline on that fire.”

Q: Big-picture data question: What does Google think about leveraging user data to better target ads (see Facebook, Yahoo, etc.)–particularly with search data and display?

Schmidt: “We have a pretty strong opinion that we’re not going to do very much of it.” We’re intensely serious about privacy.

So “we’re not going to do the kinds of things that we could do with it… without your explicit permission. And in many cases we probably won’t do it forever.”

A question on display, which I’ve missed but will have to return to.

Pichette wraps things up. Today’s data points “are not about giving you information” for coming quarters, but to give you confidence that we’re building long-term businesses.

Call ends.

Mark Mahaney’s cheat sheet will help you decipher the numbers:

This time around, the CEO of the world’s biggest social network is making his case to advertisers at the annual advertising schmoozefest in Cannes. He’s scheduled to take the stage Wednesday afternoon, and his interviewer will be Advertising Age Editor Abbey Klaassen.

After Zuckerberg’s appearance at D8, I heard lots of chatter that he would have to stop taking questions in public. But unless the 26-year-old plans to stop running the company he founded, there’s no way that can happen. So best to get right back on the horse/bicycle/insert-your-own-metaphor here.

The good news for Zuckerberg: Facebook’s privacy issues don’t seem to have diminished advertisers’ interest in his site. Even better: After he makes his presentation, responsibility for the real pitching goes back to his large, expensive and top-shelf ad team, which has already helped the company rake in a lot of ad money.

Then again, they still have plenty of work to do. Financial Times:

Just two years after beginning to monetise its audience in earnest, Facebook’s revenue per user is already half the level of that achieved by portals such as MSN and Yahoo, Mr. Maude says. But relative to the many hours most users spend on Facebook each month, its income is “way behind” that of those more established sites.

Richard Pinder, chief operating officer of Publicis Worldwide, says Mr. Zuckerberg should keep his pitch to Cannes attendees simple.

“Most of the people making the big decisions [in ad spending] are not on Facebook,” he says. “They fear Facebook. Zuckerberg should explain what it is and why it works, and not make them feel bad about it.”

This morning, Yahoo is holding its annual investor day at its Silicon Valley HQ, starring CEO Carol Bartz and a panoply of top execs at the Internet giant.

While this kind of dog-and-pony show is typical for companies–an effort to get all chummy with institutional investors and financial analysts and convince them that there is a grand scheme for the road ahead–what’s really at stake is the need to cover over problems and play up the prettier parts.

That’s why–after a period of rather fallow deal activity–Yahoo (YHOO) suddenly started pulling out the shiny objects just last week, designed, in part, to show that Yahoo is on the move and pushing vigorously forward.

We have a plan, folks! Silver bullets all around!

That included its acquisition of both social media start-up Associated Content and Koprol, a social location service in Asia, as well as a big, noisy partnership with mobile handset giant Nokia (NOK) related to email and maps.

But while those are all well and good, they will have almost zero impact on Yahoo until they get revved up and results can be judged.

Thus, it’s probably more helpful for those in analog attendance–the press was not invited as we are apparently considered akin to skunks at a garden party–to focus on some key issues that are present and accounted for right now and to grill Yahoo about them.

To be fair, Yahoo is planning on covering the most important of these at the moment: The status of its partnership deal with Microsoft (MSFT), related to search and online advertising.

It will be interesting to see what advertising operations exec Mark Morrissey, the Yahoo-side integration lead, has to say about it all and what impact the company expects from it.

Some key questions that need asking:

How soon does it roll out–late this year or early next year?

How does Yahoo get search share up–via improvements to its homepage and user experience–to make this as lucrative as possible?

Will the deal, which is intended to result in bigger search-query volume, finally bring a key metric–revenue per search–up, especially after the Microsoft RPS guarantees run out in 18 months?

Do the cost savings of letting Microsoft’s Bing power Yahoo search compensate for trading away control of a key source of income and revenue?

And perhaps most of all, will any of this put a dent in the overwhelming search dominance of Google (GOOG)?

Here’s a really good analysis by Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney on this very subject, with lots of nice numbers to chew over:

yhoo search deal

Of course, there are a lot of other thing to look at, such as:

The continuing issue around the talent drain (Yahoo is smart to trot out lively new Chief Products dude Blake Irving, formerly of Microsoft, to counter the drip-leak-of-execs issue), an explanation of its penny-ante (but pricey) marketing efforts so far, a report on what’s most innovative in its oft-clogged product pipeline, a detailed assessment of the online display market and thoughts on increased competition in this key Yahoo arena from Google. Also: What’s up with mobile?

You can see the whole agenda for the day here, and BoomTown will be following the proceedings via a Webcast.

Also, as Yahoo notes on its Welcome page for the event: “Everything you’ll hear today–from looking back at what we’ve done to looking ahead at the incredible opportunities we’re tackling–add up to one thing: creating shareholder value.”

So analysts, let’s don’t forget about the stock price, which has stubbornly stuck in the $15 range for a long time now.

In fact, it is now almost the exact same price as it was one year ago and 75 cents lower than at its last investor day in late October last year.

Yes, definitely ask about that.

Nope. But it might be generating a few extra bucks.

Publishers are being tight-lipped and/or vague about their iPad sales, but here’s some directional news from Condé Nast, which launched one of the first magazine apps for the device: Condé says its iPhone/iPad version of GQ has sold 57,000 copies since its launch in December. (By comparison, Condé moves 900,000 print copies a month to subscribers and newsstand buyers.)

Fine. But what about iPad sales, which kicked off in April? Astonishingly, Condé doesn’t actually know, because it doesn’t sell an iPad-specific app. So it can’t tell if any particular app was bought with the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad in mind.

GQ spokeswoman Peri Dorset allows that the company did see a spike with the April 3 launch of the iPad. And then again with the launch of the 3G model. But that’s about as precise as she’ll get.

We do know, though, that three weeks into January, GQ had sold 12,000 copies of that month’s app, and that was just iPhone/iPods. So I’m not convinced the iPad has provided GQ with a huge boost.

Best-case scenario, for now, is that the apps provide some ancillary income. How much? GQ sells its app for $2.99, but repeat buyers can get subsequent issues (or back issues) for $1.99. For argument’s sake, let’s guess that two-thirds of GQ’s app buyers are first-time buyers. By my math, that’s about $150,000 in gross sales revenue–$112,400 from $2.99 sales, and $37,400 from $1.99 sales. Knock off 30 percent for Apple’s (AAPL) take and you’re down to $105,000.

Needle mover? Nope. But Condé also gets the chance to sell some advertisers the right to be a premium app sponsor, so the dollars could pile up, eventually. Enough to cover development costs, at the very least. Call it a decent start.

Okay, Condé rivals: Ready to share your numbers?

FriendFinder, a collection of porn sites and niche social networks, was supposed to start trading this week, after filing for a public offering more than a year ago. But this morning, the company pulled its IPO, citing “market conditions.”

I’m assuming this is not a euphemism for the Dow’s plunge yesterday, but instead a polite way of saying “we couldn’t find buyers.” The AP reports that FriendFinder, which was trying to sell some 20 million shares for $10 to $12, sold 15 million shares at $7 each earlier this week in pre-IPO trading.

Now FriendFinder will have to find some other way to resolve its massive debt issues. The company throws off a lot of cash, but all of that–and more–is getting hoovered up by loan payments. It reported $45 million in income from operations in the first nine months of last year and spent $75.3 million on interest payments in the same period.

Meanwhile, if you’re in the market for a high-end sports car, this may be the time to make the FriendFinder team an offer. The company has yet to sell the Ferrari 360 Modena it bought from its founder for $125,000 in 2006. FriendFinder is carrying the car on its books at $95,000, but I’ll bet it’s willing to negotiate.

Reporting third-quarter results after market close Thursday, Google (GOOG) topped estimates, posting net income that rose to $1.64 billion, or $5.13 a share, from $1.29 billion, or $4.06 a share in the same period last year. Net revenue for the period ended in September rose nearly one percent to $4.38 billion. Excluding items, earnings for the quarter were $5.89 a share. Consensus estimates had been calling for $5.42 a share and $4.24 billion in net revenue. The chart below shows revenue sources within Google (click to enlarge).

Impressive. Seems paid clicks grew 14 percent compared to the same period last year, and four percent compared to the prior period. Cost per click was down six percent year over year, but up five percent sequentially.

“Google had a strong quarter–we saw seven percent year-over-year revenue growth despite the tough economic conditions,” said CEO Eric Schmidt. “While there is a lot of uncertainty about the pace of economic recovery, we believe the worst of the recession is behind us and now feel confident about investing heavily in our future.”

Good to hear. Google’s shares, which have already risen more than 50 percent in the past six months, are on another upward tear. They rose 1.82 percent to $539.27 on the news in after-hours trading.

Earnings call highlights via The Wall Street Journal’s Andrew LaVallee:

4:32: Call starts. The cast is the same as last quarter: Mr. Schmidt, CEO; Patrick Pichette, CFO; Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP of product management; and for the first time, Nikesh Arora, president of global sales operations and business development. But there’s a twist–they’ll be using Google’s moderator to vet questions with voters. They vote on “the most relevant questions,” which go to the Google execs, the operator says.

4:35: “While there’s obviously a lot of uncertainty about the pace of the economic recovery, we believe the worst of the recession is behind us,” Schmidt says.

He adds that Google now has the confidence to invest “heavily” in its future. “It’s all good news from our perspective, at least in looking at the quarter.”

4:37: Says “we want to really get to the perfect search engine” and that many advertisers would like to spend more with Google if the company’s product allow them to do that.

4:38: Schmidt says “we’re open for business in making strategic acquisitions, both large and small.”

4:39: It’s Pichette’s turn. “At a high level, we’re very pleased with our Q3 results,” he says. The quarter benefited from growth in AdSense for content and display initiatives.

4:41: U.S. revenue up 4% to $2.8 billion. U.K. revenue decline affected by foreign exchange as well as ongoing macroeconomic weakness, Pichette says.

4:42: Operating expenses rose from the prior quarter, mostly due to payroll, equipment and facilities-related expenses.

“We believe the worst of the recession is behind us,” he says.

4:44: Brazil was a standout in Latin America, Arora says. We’re beginning to see signs of recovery in Europe and Africa, particularly Spain. In Asia, China performed strongly as an emerging market.

4:46: Looking at the display-advertising business, those have also shown strong results, he says.

On YouTube, new advertisers and partners are helping with monetization efforts. Ninety percent of the top 50 advertisers have run YouTube campaigns with successful results–recent examples include McDonald’s and Hewlett-Packard.

4:47: YouTube has signed deals with all four major record labels and several independent labels. Earlier today, Google announced a partnership with Channel 4 in the U.K., which will bring full-length programming to the video-sharing site.

4:48: Arora adds a personal shout-out to the sales team.

4:50: Rosenberg calls the new AdWords front-end one of the company’s biggest investments of the year. Advertisers have new reports, can run more efficient campaigns and can get new features faster thanks to the platform, he says.

That’s the conclusion of an NPD survey that suggests that Mac households favor multiplatform environments, buy more gadgets and have the higher income needed to afford them.

“While Apple owners tend to own more computers and more electronics devices, there is also a high correlation among Apple owners and more affluent consumer households,” said NPD’s Stephen Baker. “The average Apple household owns 48 CE devices whereas the average computer household owns about 24.” (See chart below; click to enlarge.)

Not a surprise, really. Presumably, if you can afford to purchase a $1,199 laptop or desktop, you can afford to buy an assortment of other gadgetry to go along with it. A couple of other data points worth noting:

• 66 percent of Mac households own three computers or more, compared to 29 percent of Windows households.
• 63 percent of Mac households own an iPod. The same can be said of only 36 percent of all computer-using households.

Sadly, NPD’s survey didn’t explore how PCs are used in Mac households or how they ended up there in the first place. Are they leftovers from a PC-to-Mac switch? Are they corporate laptops? Entry-level machines for the kids? High-end gaming machines?

The company’s shares spiked, rising about 20 percent to 54 cents on news of the government’s expanded “Cash for Clunkers” program and the positive impact it should have on new car sales and, by extension, new Sirius subscriptions. That analysts had been predicting a second-quarter loss for the satellite radio company, along with the loss of thousands of subscribers, did little to temper enthusiasm. Though it seems to have done so today, now that those predictions have proven true.

Reporting second-quarter earnings this morning, Sirius posted a net loss of $157.3 million, or four cents a share on revenue that rose one percent to $590.8 million. Excluding one-time charges, though, Sirius lost only a penny a share, matching analyst estimates.

As analysts had foreseen, subscriber count slipped again. Sirius ended the quarter with 18.4 million subscribers–a one percent drop from a year ago. All told, the company lost 185,999 net subscribers during the period. And that’s prior to the addition of a $2 royalty fee.

Looking ahead, the satellite radio operator raised its outlook for the year, cautiously optimistic that the car sales that drive subscriptions will pick up in the second half of this year.

“Based on these results we are increasing guidance again and expect to exceed over $400 million in adjusted income from operations during 2009,” CEO Mel Karmazin said in an earnings release. “Growing our revenue in the face of broad declines in the advertising and automotive markets is a remarkable accomplishment, and we are well positioned for a rebound in auto sales.”

Shares in Sirius are trading down 7.41 percent at 50 cents as I write this, which is still 10 times their 52 week low. And, to be fair, they are up almost 10 cents in last 10 trading days and up about 320 percent year-to-date.

Looks like News Corp. was a little too optimistic when the company told investors in May that it expected a decline of around 30 percent in fiscal-year-adjusted operating income.

Reporting earnings this afternoon, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal and this Web site instead posted a decline of 32.5 percent.

And, to think, News Corp. lowered that forecast twice last fall.

Anyway, the company lost $203 million, or eight cents a share, in its fiscal fourth quarter. Revenue fell 10.5 percent to $7.67 billion, dragged down by a decrease in ad revenue and $403 million in impairment charges and $228 million in restructuring costs, both largely attributable to, ahem, “red-hot social networking site” MySpace.

For the quarter, News Corp. swung from $1.1 billion in net income a year ago to a net loss of $203 million. Gruesome. Excluding items, however, it earned 19 cents a share, which beat consensus estimates by a penny. So there’s that.

“I think the worst may be behind us,” News Corp. Chief Rupert Murdoch said during a conference call with analysts. “But there are no clear signs yet of a fast economic recovery.”

Which is pretty much what he said last quarter as well. “I am not an economist…but it is increasingly clear that the worst is over,” Murdoch said back in May. “As you know, I have been uncharacteristically pessimistic in recent calls, though I would argue that it was a well-founded concern. But there are emerging signs in some of our businesses that the days of precipitous decline are done and that revenues are beginning to look healthier.”