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

Microsoft had a solid fourth quarter, which is why the conference call with Wall Street analysts should be relatively short and sweet.

Or sweet, at least.

Microsoft reported beat expectations on profits that rose 30 percent, as well as on revenue. Of particular note were its Office, Entertainment and Devices and Servers and Tools units. Even the revenue at its perpetually money-sucking Online Services division was up 17 percent.

(You can see Microsoft’s charts and other data here, if you really want more.)

Here’s a liveblog of the call:

2:31 pm PT: Well, Microsoft investor relations dude-in-chief Bill Koefoed sounds unusually jaunty in his greeting.

And why not? The results are good for Microsoft, even a little giddy, with a lot of impressive numbers and solid launches of several products, from Xbox Kinect to Office 365 to Bing, the very pricey but pretty search service.

Next up is CFO Peter Klein, who also sounds like this particular call is a relief.

He talks about the results a bit, most of which are up.

“In summary, we are pleased,” says Klein about the quarter and the year. He also notes that he is “excited.”

It’s party time in Redmond!

2:38 pm: Peppy Bill is back, going through the numbers. Solid!

Klein then moves onto the future and he remains “excited.”

Now, it is onto Q&A from the analysts.

This is where I zone out a little and start to wonder if a doughnut is a wise choice for an afternoon tasty treat.

That would make me “excited.”

Lots of congrats, which only makes me hungrier. One analyst asks why it was so much stronger than expected.

Klein: The economy has improved, businesses are expanding, peeps love them some cloud.

There is a question about how the troubled Yahoo search partnership is going. Klein promises some improvement by the end of the year.

Still, bummer!

But it is quickly back to happy, with a question about the strength of Xbox and its subscribers.

“It’s fantastic,” says Klein.

Like I said, sweeeeeeet.

Microsoft has a lot to crow about in its fourth-quarter earnings today, including a 30 percent jump in profits and strong overall revenue growth in its many divisions.

It is sure a lot better than what Yahoo and Nokia turned in this week in their quarterly results.

Here’s all the charts and other data to peruse before I start liveblogging the Microsoft conference call with Wall Street analysts at 2:30 pm PT:

SlidesFY11Q4

PressReleaseFY11Q4

FinancialStatementFY11Q4

Yahoo turned in another flat performance in the second quarter, with $1.08 billion in revenue, which was slightly below Wall Street expectations.

Earnings per share were right on target, though, at 18 cents each, an increase of 18 percent. Net income was $237 million for the quarter.

Investors were expecting Yahoo to report revenue of $1.11 billion on earnings of 18 cents.

That means a revenue decline of five percent from a year ago, which Yahoo said was “primarily due to the revenue share related to the Search Agreement with Microsoft.”

More importantly, in a statement, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz also pointed to changes in its display sales operations, a key business of Yahoo:

“We experienced softness in display revenue in the second half of the quarter due to comprehensive changes we have made in our sales organization to position ourselves for more rapid display growth in the future.”

Whatever the reason, it’s not good news for Yahoo, especially considering Google’s strong results last week. Then again, it’s better than the first quarter’s six percent drop in revenue for Yahoo.

That said, Yahoo stock was down between one and two percent in after-hours trading.

Here’s the full press release to peruse, before I begin liveblogging the earnings call at 2 pm PT, as well as a link to my post on its slide deck of the results:

YHOO_Q211PressRelease_Final

Today, after Demand Media beat Wall Street expectations, its execs got on the horn with investors to explain how it plans to beat the Panda.

That would be the beastly name for Google’s rejiggering of its search algorithm, in order to rid search results of poor quality content.

Along with many other sites, Demand has gotten smacked by its raging paw.

Still, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company reported revenue of $79.5 million and six cents a share in adjusted net income.

Wall Street was expecting the company to report about $69.6 million in revenue for the three months, with four cents a share in adjusted profits.

On a GAAP basis, net loss per share was 13 cents compared to 94 cents a year ago.

Here’s the liveblog of the conference call:

2 pm PT: Demand’s investor relations dude came on and I immediately tuned out until CEO Richard Rosenblatt got on the line to talk about the results.

He was as perky as ever, launching right into the meat of the situation–how Demand was going to pretty up its offerings, such as a redesign of its flagship eHow site and its new editorial arrangement with another perky person, food lady Rachael Ray and the also perky fashionista/talk show lady Tyra Banks.

Gone will be user-generated content that Demand used to let people post at will on its eHow site that was, well, less than good.

As in, bad.

Instead, it’s “curation,” “editorial innovation” and feedback cycles.

We old-timers like to call that journalism and copyediting, complete with mean old editors who spiked said copy when it was crappy.

“Let me be clear,” said Rosenblatt, the Google changes did negatively impact Demand’s traffic. But Rosenblatt said the company dug into its content and has been improving it since.

2:17 pm: Now it was CFO Charles Hillard reading the results themselves. I am sorry, Mr. Finance Guy, but I can read it myself, so this is always the time in earnings calls when I check out and spend my time improving my content.

So when I heard words such as “stock-based comp,” I moved on to fixing all the typos that a very nice reader alerted me to, since I was writing too quickly.

Then, I briefly considered writing a high-quality post for eHow on how to write earnings and fix typos at the same time. I am that good.

2:30 pm: The CFO dude finished up and the Q&A with analysts started.

All Panda questions, natch!

Rosenblatt seemed calm, cool and collected.

“We think on this one, they did a very good job,” he said of Google’s search-fixing efforts, trying to soothe the savage beast. “We all continue to evolve.”

Which translated to: Google says jump and we say: “How high?”

Which is then followed by: “Please sir, can I have some more (traffic)?”

More Google algo change questions.

I suspect there is a new tactic afoot by Demand: Bore us into submission about the traffic devastation from Larry Page’s minions with endless questions about algo.

Finally, a question about mobile and international expansion. Apparently, Demand content is going to be translated into five different languages.

Yay! I am readying my version of “How to Boil Water” in French! (“Comment Faire Bouillir L’eau”!)

Mobile is going to be big too for Demand, which it is for everyone.

Then it was onto a question about improving content, including paying its writers more moolah, which would then eat into the Demand cheaper content business model.

I liked that question! I suddenly decided I was going to shift to a lugubrious post on the history of the Maginot Line in 132 parts!

Oops, Rosenblatt said the data has to show that the peeps want those longer pieces.

Back to the boiling water opus!

It’s on to some video questions and then back to search, as in diversifying away from relying on search to get traffic and premium prices for its advertising.

As in, how much are you going to cozy up to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg?

“It’s less about where traffic comes from and more about where they land,” said Rosenblatt, except you just know he sent a lovely floral bouquet plus a hefty selection of citrus to Zuckerberg’s new house in Silicon Valley right after Panda roared.

Rosenblatt deflected a lot of questions in this arena. “We still think that search is a fantastic way” to gain traffic, he said, making sure Google’s Page did not chomp off his hand as he courted his social networking nemesis at Facebook.

But as the old Kikuyu proverb goes: “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”

More likely, as Mary Chapin Carpenter sings: “Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes you’re the bug.”

We’ll see which is which for Demand in the quarters ahead.

Until then, here’s Carpenter performing her song, “The Bug”:

Demand Media handily beat Wall Street expectations in its first quarter results today, released after the market closed.

The company reported revenue of $79.5 million and six cents a share in adjusted net income.

Investors were expecting the company to report about $69.6 million in revenue for the three months, with four cents a share in adjusted profits.

On a GAAP basis, the net loss per share was 13 cents compared to 94 cents a year ago.

The decent results could boost Demand’s stock, which has been hit hard since Google launched “Panda,” an overhaul of its search algorithm to improve results and remove poor quality content.

In a conference call at 2 pm PT today, which BoomTown will be liveblogging, most will be paying more mind to what the online content company’s top execs–especially CEO Richard Rosenblatt–have to say about the impact of the updates from Google to Demand’s various Web offerings.

As a first strike, some of Demand’s execs briefed the media earlier today on efforts to improve the quality of its content–you can read the official press releases here on that and also here.

In them, Demand said it will remove some online posts that were substandard and created under a now-suspended writers’ compensation system. It said it is also improving reader feedback tools and adding more substantive stories to its sites.

Those are all good ideas, since Google’s tweaks have been chewing away at a range of Web sites–such as those owned by Demand–which rely heavily on search engine optimization to bring in huge traffic.

One big hit for Demand, due to Panda, has been to its flagship eHow site.

All the mishegas has hurt the Santa Monica, Calif., company’s stock. It’s down just over 30 percent since Demand’s IPO in late January, as bearish investors fret over the implications of Panda.

Still, in its report, Demand said its content and media revenue was up 72 percent to $51.9 million, compared to $30.2 million last year.

You’d think there would be a party in Redmond, Wash., today, as software giant Microsoft soundly beat Wall Street expectations in its third-quarter earnings released earlier today.

Microsoft said it had revenue of $16.43 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2011, which was up 13 percent from a year ago. Net income was $5.23 billion, or 61 cents per share, a rise of 31 percent and 36 percent, respectively.

The surge was led by sales of Office, Kinect and Xbox and a stronger economy.

But there are shadows, too, as results were dragged down by weaker revenues for its flagship Windows unit.

The report comes as Microsoft’s stock continues to lag, declining 14 percent for the year.

Buzz kill!

BoomTown livedblogged the call for Wall Street analysts:

2:30 pm PT: Peter Klein, Microsoft’s CFO, who sounds super peppy, outlined the strong quarter, especially for its Office products.

He also mentioned some glitches, such as Microsoft’s still-struggling efforts to increase revenue per search (RPS) in its longtime search and online advertising partnership with Yahoo and the slower growth of the PC sector upon which the software giant’s Windows relies.

PC should stand for “possibly crappy,” but good-boy Klein did not say so.

Investor relations dude Bill Koefoed also read through the news, sounding at times like a sports announcer on a cable television network.

“Quuuuaaadrupled…,” he intoned about one part of Microsoft’s business.

This all went on for a while, since Microsoft has a lot of divisions. Servers & Tools. Online Services. Entertainment and Devices. Fashion & Cute Tops.

Okay, not that one, but a girl can dream.

It was all fun and games until Koefoed got to the Yahoo problem, which Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz had used as a cudgel in her earnings report recently.

Yes, it is a bummer. But soon it was back to the happy land of Xbox!

Klein said he was pleased with the results in a jaunty manner, which made me desperately wish Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer led the call.

Because he’s always one obnoxious query away from a volcanic popping off.

Which is why I love those Yahoo calls and Bartz.

Buzz kill!

2:54 pm PT: That was fast–the call was quickly into questions.

The first is about COGS–cost of goods sold–and how it impacts gross margins.

Klein said the expenses were volume driven. I’d explain, but then I would fall asleep.

The next question was about stock buybacks.

That might get the stock up. Yeah, said Klein, they’ll keep doing that–not that it has helped much on the share price front.

More and more questions, about the PC market, the issues at Yahoo (let’s get that RPS up!), the Windows Phone 7 business.

I’ll be honest, I was a bit bored and started reading a riveting Business Insider interview with TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington on his myriad conflicts of interest related to his tech investing while also blogging as a news guy.

Whatever you think about him, that dude is good copy.

Wait, back to growth rates for Office!

It’s going great, said Klein (hey, maybe Arrington will invest!).

The call wraps up on news of an upcoming investor conference, being held near Disney World.

Oooh, party time!

Software giant Microsoft soundly beat Wall Street expectations in its third-quarter earnings released after the market closed today.

Microsoft said it had revenue of $16.43 billion for the quarter ended Mar. 31, 2011, which was up 13 percent from a year ago. Net income was $5.23 billion, or 61 cents per share, a rise of 31 percent and 36 percent, respectively.

Investors were expecting the Redmond, Wash. tech company to have profits of 56 cents per share, up 45 cents per share in the same quarter last year. Revenue was expected to come in at $16.2 billion.

As usual, Microsoft beating of expectations still has not helped its lackluster stock, which is down almost 14 percent year over year.

Its shares are currently down more than two percent in after-hours trading, to $26.09.

That’s due to worries about PC market growth, in the wake of an explosion of tablet and smartphone devices from competitors such as Apple and Google.

Most of Microsoft’s divisions were up in terms of revenue, especially its Xbox, Kinect and Office businesses. That offsetted slowing PC growth, Microsoft said, as well as a 4.5 percent drop in revenue in its flagship Windows and Windows Live division.

BoomTown will be liveblogging the earnings call at 2:30 pm PT.

Until then, here is the official press release:

letterheadFY11Q3 –

MicroHoo is funky!

At least according to Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz on the Silicon Valley search giant’s first-quarter earnings conference call about its recent financial performance.

Yahoo’s results showed a continued worrisome revenue growth stall, due in large part to a search advertising fall-off, and a still-turning turnaround.

Yahoo reported revenues of $1.06 billion, down six percent from a year ago, on net earnings of 17 cents a share, down 28 percent.

The results were essentially in line with Wall Street expectations.

2:03 pm PT: The call started right on time, as per usual. Maybe they can’t get search right anymore, but Yahoo execs sure know how to start an analysts’ confab.

Bartz started off the call, noting “overall, our turnaround is proceeding on schedule.”

Well, the schedule of a three-toed sloth, I suppose, but it’s on schedule!

Bartz is too smart, though, and quickly noted the problems with search revenue declines, related to its search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft.

Still, she then used the unusual term “funky comparisons” to dismiss the key issue.

But isn’t she the one who struck the funky deal with Microsoft that has resulted in these funky comparisons and these even funkier search advertising revenues?

Just askin’!

Bartz proceeded quickly to noting Yahoo’s advances due to technology improvements, which showed a doubling of impressions to big events such as the Super Bowl and the Oscars.

It’s a good point, since Yahoo–for all its troubles–is still a huge traffic driver, including serving up 1.3 billion page views for the Oscars.

Bartz talked about monetization and said a lot of other stuff, but got to the finances quickly.

“Search was a mixed bag,” she said flatly. You can say that again–but not in a good way.

Bartz tried to put a good-news spin on it, but had to admit that “on the downside [Microsoft's] adCenter is not seeing strong RPS,” she said.

That’s revenue per search and a key number that Yahoo had thought would be better by now.

Bartz noted that the paid search markets internationally will be delayed until MicroHoo gets its act together.

Good idea!

2:16 pm: CFO Tim Morse took over to go through the numbers.

“We had good display momentum around the globe,” he said.

But search was, um, bad. It underperformed, but Yahoo had that guarantee from Microsoft to pay out, which Morse called a “financial floor.”

Morse pretty much read the press release from here on out.

2:24 pm: Bartz was back talking up the huge audience Yahoo has abroad. And it is true–the Yahoo brand is a golden one globally.

Also video consumption is up too, as it is across the Web, in terms of views and time spent. Yahoo’s “Primetime in No Time” got 500 million streams in the quarter.

Bartz turned to mobile, which is weak no matter what she said about the laudable Livestand. It’s one of many in a very competitive market.

Same for social, which Yahoo has essentially abdicated to Facebook. That said, Yahoo has tried to weave social within its myriad of sites and it gets it, especially compared to the socially awkward Google.

Bartz summed up that she hoped everyone gets that profitability and revenue growth were on track to get better, promising more at the investor day in May.

2:30 pm: Q&A time!

The first question is about display growth. It’s a softball, since display was up.

The next is about other revenue growth areas to come.

Bartz–who seemed not so prepped for such an obvious question–ticked off shopping, travel and uuuuuh….

Morse jumped in and talked about making internal connections, which I also did not understand.

An analyst then wanted to “dig into” search problems. I’d say it’s time to call in Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel!

Relative to RPS, Bartz acknowledged it was low and everyone was studying the issue. There is a plan, apparently. Again, Bartz was maddeningly vague.

I missed the next question and then it was back to search.

Bartz was not getting too specific about search, but would say video advertising was going to do well.

She did note that Yahoo expected a dip in Q1 related to search revenue, “but the dip went a little lower than we expected and lasted a little longer than expected.”

Bartz said she had recently sat down with Microsoft execs to go over the problems. How much would I have liked to have been a fly on that wall!

The next question was about video and it turns out Bartz loves the babbling babies too! I knew we had something cool in common.

The next question is about Japan and the possible deal to sell off Yahoo’s ownership of Yahoo Japan!

Morse said diddly, except “we continue to make progress.”

A question about display and possible content verticals.

Verticals Yahoo is interested in, according to Bartz: Entertainment, lifestyle, women, gossip.

“The things people really want to do, they want to disappear,” said Bartz, which was an interesting way of putting it.

Yet another question in what was beginning to feel like an endless call.

It was about Right Media, Yahoo’s advertising exchange. Cleaning it up, etc.

The next question is about communications, as in email.

Bartz even sounded bored and messed up a few words. “I’ve had too many Diet Cokes,” she joked.

Personally, I am considering disappearing into some content, since there is yet another question.

It’s–no surprise–an RPS question!

Funky!

Search guarantee payments from Microsoft are in place for another four quarters. Thank goodness.

Bartz got more detailed about the problems. There is some kind of prediction issue, which she said Microsoft is working on.

Now a local advertising question and its relationship with Facebook.

Bartz grabbed this one by the horns, noting you don’t have to run to the social networking powerhouse to get you a social ad!

It’s about branding with a social component. Which would be, um, Facebook, which was part of Yahoo’s Chrysler campaign referenced by Bartz.

A question about daily deals.

It’s growing, but more at Groupon and LivingSocial, which Morse does not mention.

Finally, the last question.

Another gigantic softball on engagement and Yahoo’s new content platform and some mobile deets query about whether Yahoo can make it there.

Bartz said she was working on it. As to content, Bartz said stats show big lifts.

“The good news is that it’s all in the right direction,” she said.

Up would certainly be good.

Yahoo announced its first-quarter earnings today, showing a continued worrisome revenue growth stall, due in large part to declines in search revenue from its partnership with Microsoft.

The Silicon Valley search giant reported revenue of $1.06 billion, down six percent from a year ago, on net earnings of 17 cents a share, down 28 percent.

The performance was essentially in line with Wall Street expectations, which had been estimating that Yahoo would report $1.05 billion in net revenue and earnings of 16 cents a share, after traffic acquisition costs (TAC) was taken out of its results.

That compared to revenue of $1.13 billion and 22 cents in earnings in the same period a year ago, results that were goosed by the sale of its Zimbra email asset to VMware.

Yahoo’s revenue growth drought was due largely to declines in its search advertising business, which fell 19 percent in the quarter from $440 million to $357 million.

Contractual guarantees paid by Microsoft, its search partner, masked even larger declines.

On a GAAP basis, search revenue was $455 million, a 46 percent decrease compared to $841 million for the first quarter of 2010.

Yahoo said display revenue ex-TAC increased 10 percent to $471 million, compared to $427 million for the first quarter of 2010.

It was a good performance, but by no means a barn burner, especially compared to Google’s 27 percent revenue growth year-over-year in its earnings last week.

Thus, it seems the turnaround efforts at Yahoo, much touted by CEO Carol Bartz, are still turning.

In a statement, she said:

“We are solidly executing toward our plan for returning Yahoo! to sustainable revenue and profit growth. During the quarter, we beat the midpoint of revenue guidance while continuing to deliver on the bottom line.”

As BoomTown had previously written, in the last quarterly call, Bartz had warned that MicroHoo had not grown yet into the beautiful swan expected in this ugly-searchling tale, noting that it might take until the second half of 2011 to see some prettier results.

Thus, Yahoo is right to focus on display advertising, an arena it dominates still, despite increasingly successful incursions from Google and Facebook.

Yahoo’s stock is certainly reflecting the worry, holding fast to its share price in between $16 and $17 for a while now. It closed today at $16.12, down 23 cents a share.

A year ago it was above $18.

The shares rose almost three percent in after-hours trading, though, to $16.57.

I will be liveblogging the conference call Yahoo’s top execs have with analysts, starting at 2 pm.

Until then, here’s the official Q1 earnings press release to peruse:

YHOO_Q111PressReleaseFinal

Perusing AOL’s leaked damn-the-journalism-full-speed-ahead business plan, BoomTown was a little late to the Microsoft Bing event this morning called “Farsight: Beyond the Search Box.”

But things had certainly been cooking with gas when I walked into the meeting room at the University of San Francisco, which the organizers had decked out in white nubby rugs, white pleather couches and those white egg-shaped chairs found only in 1970s decor.

Schweeet!

First up was well-known investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, poo-poohing Microsoft’s prospects of ever making money in search.

“It’s difficult to produce a new search company,” said Thiel, noting that even with a growing market share it’s curtains for Bing, given the huge fixed costs. “As far as I can tell, it’s still not breaking even.”

Ouch!

By the way, Thiel sold semantic search engine Powerset to Microsoft for upward of $100 million in 2008 to help it, you know, get ahead in search.

Way to insult your money-bearing hosts!

Then, moderator Vivek Wadhwa harangued the panelists from Google, Microsoft and Blekko in the session “Who Will Win the Spam Wars?”

And they say I’m a snarky moderator! Wadhwa is snarktastic!

Wadhwa did not like any of it–not crappy content sites that sully Web search, not the efforts the companies were making to fix things, not the vision the trio had of the future.

And, by the way, Microsoft was not ever going to make money off all the company’s efforts.

Way to insult your hosts! I like this event!

Of course, what everyone was interested in was a smackdown between Google and Microsoft, given that the search giant accused the software giant of stealing its results today.

In an excellent, if exhaustive, post by Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan, Google said Bing was cheating by lifting its search results, which Google said it had proved via a “honeypot” sting operation.

“I’ve spent my career in pursuit of a good search engine,” Google’s Amit Singhal told Search Engine Land. “I’ve got no problem with a competitor developing an innovative algorithm. But copying is not innovation, in my book.”

The very presence of the word “honeypot” in any story about search algorithms is superb, in my book, even though this “controversy” is pretty much a he-said-he-said geek-off.

Google’s Matt Cutts kept up the cheater pressure at the Bing event, in a short debate with Microsoft’s Harry Shum, who was not having any of it.

“It’s not like we actually copy anything,” he said.

Translation: Actually, we do borrow, just like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg did to the Winklevii, resulting in a social networking behemoth that will soon take over all search and make this whole debate moot.

Microsoft is rubber, Google is glue. And Facebook, which was not present at the search event, is the real sticky honeypot.

BoomTown was looking over Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong as I blogged the conference call after Yahoo released its fourth-quarter earnings after markets closed today.

It’s pretty! But Yahoo’s revenue growth–still, not so much.

Let’s begin:

2:02 pm PT: Yahoo turned in earnings that were slightly better than expected, although no big shakes either, so the call was likely to sound exactly like the last several quarterly calls.

Bingo! We’re trying! It’s encouraging! You’ll see!

In fact, “encouraging” was just the word that CEO Carol Bartz used as she tried to focus on a doubling of operating income, operating margin and earnings per share.

Impressive, the revenue at Yahoo is still stubbornly not moving, which the company continued to attribute to the new search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft.

“This is all part of our plan to turn Yahoo around,” said Bartz, who added a new buzzword, “personalized content,” to its offerings.

She turned the call over to Yahoo CFO Tim Morse, who ran through the numbers, which pretty much came down to this: Display advertising up 16 percent from last year, while search revenue dropped 18 percent.

As in previous quarters, Morse talked about how “headwinds” will soon lessen and it will be smooth sailing for Yahoo ahead.

After the stormy seas of recent years, that would be nice, since investors have gotten pretty seasick owning Yahoo shares.

Morse offered that, “while there is still much to do, we are still executing well against our plan” and went on about how good things are.

Finally, we have a “unified purpose,” which he characterized as personalized content too.

It’s a nice new catchword for Yahoo, and I liked Morse’s strong tone and gumption, which for an accountant was like hollering.

His big Achilles’ heel: The revenues projections ahead remain soft.

2:24 pm: Back to Bartz, who focused on the future success of the Microsoft advertising alliance and also Yahoo’s leadership in display advertising.

She listed some big offline brands, such as Wal-Mart and Macy’s, noting when looking for online ads, “That’s right, they all came to Yahoo.”

Bartz moved on to its stake in China’s Alibaba Group and noted it was a “great investment with a bright future.” Translation: We are not selling for now.

But noting its investment in Yahoo! Japan, Bartz had a slightly different take, mentioning talks to “unlock” the value of the stake. Translation: Maybe we’ll sell if we can figure out how not to pay all those taxes.

Bartz did the same with all of Yahoo properties, putting a sunny spin on what is still a turnaround situation.

It’s a good strategy, but it is one that is starting to sound like a broken record, especially when Google, Facebook and others seem to be like a house on fire.

2:35 pm: Now on to Q&A, in which Wall Street analysts ask softball questions of executives.

And so they do, asking queries that include small details about its operating margin, questions on tiny changes in numbers due to accounting changes. And very little about larger strategy.

You can read about this stuff in the press release, but whatever.

I am thinking of starting an investment bank, so I can jump in on these calls and ask some questions that have actual substance.

The United Bank of Swisher? Goldman Sucks?

Ooh, I was wrong, because one analyst asked a good one about possible future layoffs.

Bartz noted the company would be adding people, um, after laying some employees off.

It’s all about “re-allocating” staff, which Yahoo did earlier today by laying off one percent of its workforce, after an earlier four-percent cut.

Next, a question about search share, with Morse noting there will be search volume growth in the future.

Big message: We are in this to grow the share.

Except it has not been growing, as the last several months of surveys of search share have shown.

But Bartz firmly declared: “We’ll be up” in 2011.

A question focused in on mobile, and Bartz pointed out that Yahoo had the disadvantage of not having a mobile operating system such as Google does with Android.

Good point!

2:59 pm: Another terrific analyst comment about the disconnect between the execs encouraging comments and the actual financials, which show a downturn in, yes, revenue.

It is exactly the point here, which Yahoo has been trying to spin. Morse went through the list of excuses, from bumpiness of the search transition to weakness in affiliate sales to whatever.

Bartz jumped in and blamed the search alliance again, noting that moving advertisers over to the new platform was hard to do.

“I will not back down on the fact that we are gaining momentum,” said Bartz about search. “There is a lot going on here.”

Morse chimed in, noting he was the one using “gaining momentum” in his script. “I really believe that,” he said, going through the terrific plans.

“You’re correct the top line is not showing that yet,” said Morse in an increasingly loud voice. “There’s an awful lot there to be optimistic about.”

The accountant that roared.

Encouraging.

But then came the last question about the growth of Facebook, the Silicon Valley social networking phenom that is clearly going to be Yahoo’s biggest rival over the next years.

Bartz acknowledged Facebook’s explosive growth, but declared the company more compatible than competitive.

“There’s room for everybody here,” she said.

Presumably, that’s the hope for Yahoo.

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

Tonight, All Things Digital will debut its first extension of the D: All Things Digital conference, with D: Dive Into Mobile.

The original nickname for the event was “mini-d,” since it is shorter than big-D, focused on one key topic and has a more intimate audience.

But the speakers Walt Mossberg and I have assembled are anything but small on the critical topic of mobile–beginning with tonight’s opening session with Google Android kingpin Andy Rubin.

There is a lot to talk, about from monetization of the ever-popular operating system to its rivalry with the Apple iPhone to its relationship with wireless carriers.

D: Dive Into Mobile continues all day Tuesday, with speakers that include: Dan Hesse, President and CEO of Sprint Nextel; Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion; Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard; Joe Belfiore, Vice President of Windows Phone Program Management at Microsoft; Jon Rubinstein of Palm, now owned by Hewlett-Packard; Foursquare CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley; Google Ad Products Management head Susan Wojcicki; AT&T Emerging Devices President Glenn Lurie; and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.

D: Dive Into Mobile is being held at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco and, as usual, we’ll be liveblogging the whole thing and also posting highlight videos.

Along with Mossberg and me, Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret and MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka will be conducting the interviews.

For more information, click here for D: Dive Into Mobile news and more.

And we’ve just added an exciting new speaker to the already top-drawer list: Daniel Ek, co-founder and CEO of Spotify.

For those living under a rock, Ek (pictured here with co-founder Martin Lorentzon) leads one of the most exciting music services on the Web right now.

In fact, the Swedish entrepreneur is shaking up how and where people listen to and consume music.

As MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka–who will be interviewing Ek onstage–recently wrote of Spotify’s efforts to bring its hugely popular (and legal) streaming offering to the U.S. market:

In Europe, where Spotify has been a very big success, listeners can stream an unlimited amount of music, on demand, without ever paying a cent. But in the U.S., rival streaming services like Rhapsody, MOG and Napster generally only offer a very brief trial period of a few days before requiring that a pay wall go up.

For the past two years, Spotify has insisted that free, unlimited streaming is the only way the service will work, because that’s Spotify’s most effective marketing technique. Subscribers who do pay up get benefits like ad-free music, and the ability to port their songs to mobile devices like iPhones.

But the labels, most notably Warner Music Group, have insisted that unlimited free streams only serve to strip away their product’s remaining value–if you can listen for free on Spotify, why would you ever buy another CD or iTunes single?

The whole mobile music space is a riveting one to dive into, of course, and we think Ek is the perfect person to help us do so.

Ek will appear Tuesday morning, December 6, but D: Dive Into Mobile opens on Monday, December 6, with an evening onstage interview with Google Android majordomo Andy Rubin.

The new conference represents the very first brand extension of our D: All Things Digital conference, now in its ninth year of grilling the big names in tech and media to sold-out analog audiences and scores more on the Web.

And, as always, there will be no PowerPoints, no panels and definitely no pontificating.

What there will be are unrehearsed, unscripted and unexpected interviews with top players, taking a big-picture view of the broader digital landscape.

But, unlike big D, D: Dive Into Mobile is topic-focused, drilling down deeply into the ubiquity of mobile technology and devices, and its implications for brands, organizations and consumers worldwide.

Offering a more intimate and focused conference setting, D: Dive Into Mobile will feature other industry heavyweights, including: Dan Hesse, President and CEO of Sprint Nextel; Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion; Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard; Joe Belfiore, Vice President of Windows Phone Program Management at Microsoft; Jon Rubinstein of Palm, now owned by Hewlett-Packard; Foursquare CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley; Google Ad Products Management head Susan Wojcicki; and AT&T Emerging Devices President Glenn Lurie.

D: Dive Into Mobile will be held at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco and, as usual, we’ll be liveblogging the whole thing and also posting highlight videos.

Along with Walt Mossberg, Kafka and I, Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret will be conducting the interviews.

You can sign up here for D: Dive Into Mobile.

While everyone is considering whether to brine or deep-fry the turkey this week, All Things Digital HQ will be busy with our preparations for D: Dive Into Mobile.

That includes setting the program, which takes place in two weeks and will open with an evening interview with Google’s Andy Rubin (pictured here).

As the search giant’s mobile chief and principal force and creator of its Android operating system, Rubin is responsible for the ongoing development of the major rival to the Apple iPhone.

Many have challenged Android, including a recent jab from Apple CEO Steve Jobs, questioning its overall experience and whether or not it’s actually open.

Nonetheless, Rubin and Android have proven to be a disruptive and fast-growing force in the mobile space, aiming for dominance akin to Microsoft’s on the desktop.

Ironic? Yes.

Rubin started as an engineer at Apple and later worked at General Magic, where he participated in developing Magic Cap, an operating system and interface for handheld devices. When Magic Cap failed, Rubin joined Artemis Research, founded by Steve Perlman, which became WebTV and was eventually acquired by Microsoft.

After several years, Rubin left to found another smartphone effort called Danger, which was also acquired by Microsoft, in 2008.

Disillusionment with his ouster as CEO of Danger motivated him to found Android, which was later acquired by Google.

Now, it seems Rubin is poised to make good on his first efforts at making a truly smart smartphone ubiquitous.

And he is only one of many of the industry heavyweight speakers at D: Dive Into Mobile, among them: Dan Hesse, president and CEO of Sprint Nextel; Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion; Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard; Joe Belfiore, vice president of Windows Phone Program Management at Microsoft; Jon Rubinstein of Palm, now owned by Hewlett-Packard; Foursquare CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley; Google advertising czar Susan Wojcicki; and Glenn Lurie, president of Emerging Devices for AT&T.

Plus, there is also one more big speaker we’ll be announcing soon, so stay tuned.

D: Dive Into Mobile will be held at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco on December 6 and 7.

It represents the very first brand extension of our flagship D: All Things Digital conference, now in its ninth year of grilling the big names in tech and media to sold-out analog audiences and scores more on the Web.

And, as always, there will be no PowerPoints, no panels and definitely no pontificating. What there will be are unrehearsed, unscripted and unexpected interviews, where real news is often broken.

But, unlike big D, D: Dive Into Mobile is topic-focused, drilling down deeply into the ubiquity of mobile technology and devices, and its implications for brands, organizations and consumers worldwide.

Along with Walt Mossberg and me, Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret and MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka will be conducting the interviews.

As usual, we’ll be liveblogging the whole thing and also posting highlight videos.

But there’s nothing like being there, so you can sign up for the D: Dive Into Mobile conference here.

BoomTown arrived late to the Facebook mobile event for the press due to traffic related to the parade today for the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory–and where I would much rather be right now.

Go Giants!

10:53 am PT: In any case, I am here in the cafeteria of Facebook again, where the company continues its attempts to take over the known digital universe before Google does.

Currently, the social networking giant notes “200 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook from a phone, more than triple the number just one year ago.”

Thus, some new tries of a lot of stuff, such as single sign-on.

Meaning you sign on a Facebook and it signs you on all over the Web (or at least at those in partnership with the company).

Such as at Groupon and Zynga.

This single sign-on stuff has been tried by many before, a kind of Holy Grail of the Web, and where everyone has failed.

But it also the proverbial camel’s nose poking in your digital tent.

As in, the whole Facebook body is surely coming in next.

Facebook’s exec in charge of all this, Eric Tseng, talks about a virtuous circle of single sign-on, happy users and happy developers, sounding as if this is the single biggest problem facing humanity.

A password crisis! Silicon Valley to the rescue!

Perhaps the only issue the now damaged administration of President Barack Obama could actually get some legislation passed on now.

“My fellow Americans, we have too long be stuck in a miasma of forgetting which name of our dog we used for our password plus the number one…”

How much do I want to be at Giants parade right now? Much!

11:02 am: Next, we move onto more ability to show your location to friends on Facebook better and make sense of it by opening location APIs.

More heavy pontificating about what a disaster it is that we cannot properly see where our friends are on Facebook in the real world.

Of course, this leaves out the pertinent point that my “friends” on Facebook are exactly those I do not want to run into at the Starbucks on El Camino Real in Palo Alto, Calif.

Loopt Founder Sam Altman comes up to show off the integration with Facebook Places, where this problem is solved anyway.

“We believe data wants to be unified,” says Altman.

Certainly if you are the Borg, you want it to be unified. Me, not so much.

11:11 am: Now comes the attempted Groupon-killer from Facebook, which is creatively called “Deals.”

This is essentially allowing Facebook Places to locate a person and then merchants to offer deals when a user is nearby via a platform offered by Facebook.

You can do individual deals, such as getting a beer at a bar when you check in. Then, there is a loyalty deal on the phone, taking the place of that dog-eared card you always lose.

And there is the “friend deal.” This is not friends with benefits, sadly.

It means if you check in and bring a lot of folks, one eats free–which sounds just a little naughty.

Also, there is one deal type related to charity.

For the Gap, for example, you get a free jeans if you are among the first 10,000 to check in at a Gap store. There are 500 million Facebook users, so you do the math.

Essentially, it is about getting stuff if you check in, including experiences.

So, just like little white mice in Facebook’s lab, we push the button, we get the cheese. Sigh.

But I wonder if I check in right now, I can be transported to the Giants parade via a time machine. Now that might be something worth handing over my privacy to Facebook.

“The big takeaway for today is that there is obviously a lot of change in the social space,” says Facebook CEO and Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. “You can rethink any product area and make it be social.”

Indeed, you can. And Facebook obviously is going to be plowing on through a lot of them in order to solidify its stranglehold on the consumer.

11:23 am: Q&A!

The first question is on privacy and third-party developers giving up your location.

Yes, that!

Zuckerberg makes assurances that the current privacy steps now in place are working just fine and also users need to consent.

“The place information about people is not public,” he says.

There is question from Ben Parr of Mashable, about whether there is an iPad app for Facebook coming.

“It’s not mobile…it is a computer,” declares Zuckerberg, dismissing the very good question.

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” countered Parr, correctly.

“Well, sorry,” said Zuckerberg with more than a little bit of snark.

For a second, he sounds just like the guy from the Facebook movie.

But Zuckerberg quickly declares his love of Apple products and apologizes, although he should not have as it was a funny exchange.

A question about single sign-on. Zuckerberg notes that it has been tried, but the experience was bad.

“What we think is going to happen now is that it is so easy when it works, it is a whole different experience,” he said, comparing it to the way YouTube made video uploading on the Web easier.

Zuckerberg’s goal is that all apps become social, which is also a virtuous circle for Facebook, of course.

A question about the deals offer. It seems for Zuckerberg that Facebook is not getting a cut from retailers right now, as Groupon does.

Ruh-roh, Andrew Mason!

Zuckerberg then notes that the Places offering is going well, without giving a lot of specifics.

At the end, PR maven Brandee Barker wraps it up by saying what I have been thinking this entire time:

“Go Giants!”

BoomTown had to park a badillion miles away from Facebook’s suburban HQ in Palo Alto, Calif. and hoofed it there for a press event that unveiled the sFund.

What’s that? A $250 million fund for social start-ups.

10:40 am PT: The excitement was building–well, not really…well, not at all, in fact–at the Facebook cafeteria, as the Silicon Valley press got to see the name of the sFund on screens throughout the room.

Kleiner Perkins power VC John Doerr started off the proceedings with some microphone snafus, when he tried to get out from behind the podium.

“John, sometimes you have to stay in the box,” joked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who was sitting onstage in what appears to be an Internet Hall of Fame group.

The others would be Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zynga CEO and Founder Mark Pincus, and giant-man-about-Web Bing Gordon.

Doerr talked on about the importance of social, related to the Internet.

Then, he introed Zuckerberg, hoodie-less, who agreed with him, talking about photos and how social made them hot on Facebook.

Apparently, everything is going social. Personally, I am now contemplating becoming a hermit.

Doerr went full Oprah on him, asking what would inspire him to innovate, if he were starting out today (and presumably there were no Winklevii around to “borrow” an idea from).

“If you take any passion and map it to an industry,” said Zuckerberg, it will result in disruption.

Then Doerr channeled Barbara Walters at Pincus, tossing him a softball query about the fabulousness of it all.

For example: “What’s inspired you to be a CEO at this amazing company?” (Note to Walt Mossberg: Let’s file that tough one away for D9!)

11:01 am:Thank goodness then for Bezos, who simply said he hoped these new companies will take some of that $250 million and use Amazon Web Services.

He talked about how these trends grow virally and “sometimes violently.”

Ouch!

Speaking of pinchy, Bezos moved on to some chemical explosion metaphor, and I am now certain I want to be a hermit crab.

Then, after a question about what he would do now, he veered to bioengineering! Doerr wanted a social answer, but Bezos was talking test tubes and “engineered and synthetic life.”

But Gordon behaved for John “Diane Sawyer” Doerr and talked about how social is the only place to be for the cool kids.

He reeled off the other partners, including Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Co.

One more question from Doerr: Five years from now, what is going to make you “delighted” about and for the customers you service.

Gordon: He could see the family.

Pincus: He has 12-week twins, not the Winklevii, who are still too young to use Facebook. He was excited it is all getting wired.

“When everyone is always connected to one another, rather than connected to the Web,” he said, that’s the bomb.

He called the big social companies “dial tones,” as in Zynga was the gaming dial tone, Amazon was the shopping dial tone and Facebook was the dial tone.

Zuckerberg: I was not sure he was actually answering the question. But I believed his wish was about these social networks getting to scale.

He went on though, talking about how some companies were building a “light” social layer versus companies where social was “built fundamentally into the product.”

These, of course, have an advantage, according to the gospel of Zuckerberg.

Bezos: He talked about Amazon’s Web services some more–this dude is a retailer, so he was sure good at selling.

Gordon, who is apparently like Ed McMahon to Doerr’s Johnny Carson, rounded up the feel-good session.

11:17 am: Q&A.

Go Miguel Helft, from the New York Times, who asked a good question, about what took so long for Doerr to do this fund, since social–i.e., Facebook–has been around for seven years or more.

Doerr joked, “Next question.” Ha.

But really. Doerr did not answer except to say that Zynga only exploded a year ago, so back off, Miguel.

There were two other dullish questions, about new partners.

“It’s a quarter-billion-dollar party,” said Gordon, which I was not quite wanting to attend. Which made me a social party pooper.

Larry Magid from CBS asked about social responsibility around privacy, especially after the recent controversy around the leaking of Facebook user info to advertisers, via third-party apps companies such as Zynga.

Then, there ws a question about whether this is not simply the “fbFund,” as in Facebook, since the social networking site was going to benefit the most from all this.

No, it was not, declares Doerr.

More questions–about monetization, advertising, free versus paid and an off-topic one about rumors of Amazon launching an app store (of course it is!).

Zuckerberg took the monetization one. All of the above, it’s great, money for all.

The event finished with a very odd poem by Gordon, which ended with a decent joke about the possibility that entrepreneurs, if they are lucky, get a movie “made about you.”

He was referring to “The Social Network,” which trashed Zuckerberg.

In any case, quarter-billion-dollar party on, Mark.

The invitations to Apple’s special events are usually pretty coy about offering clues to the subject matter, but given the image of the lion on the invite to today’s “Back to the Mac” unveiling, it’s a fairly safe bet that we’ll get a look at the next iteration of the Mac operating system, OS X Lion. Either that or Apple is announcing the creation of a wildlife reserve in Africa, but the smart money is on the former.

The question is what else Steve Jobs will trot out. A refresh of the MacBook Air has been much rumored, and some incremental updates to the MacBook Pros are also a possibility. New versions of iLife and iWork could make an appearance. And who knows, maybe we’ll get official confirmation of a Verizon-friendly iPhone. Or not.

9:21 am: We have arrived at Apple in Cupertino. In a break from recent events, the press has been invited for breakfast above Town Hall.

10:03 am: Damn. Hamstrung by a network issue. Looks like I’ll be live-blogging this via iPhone (sound of fingers crossing) … Steve Jobs takes the stage to another full house this morning. He notes that while he’ll preside over today’s events, he’s leaving the heavy lifting to the engineers responsible for the new products being announced today.

Tim Cook takes the stage to give a quick overview of Apple’s Mac business. The Mac accounted for a third of Apple’s revenue last year – $22 billion. He notes that were the Mac to be a stand-alone business it would be No. 110 on the Fortune 500 (“not that we have any plans to do that,” he adds to much laughter).

Cook continues: The Mac has outgrown the market for 18 quarters in a row. The U.S. consumer market share for the Mac is 20.7 percent. We’ve seen astonishing growth.

Cook notes that there are some 600,000 registered Mac developers. Plus, “AutoCAD is coming to the Mac–-we’ve coveted this for a long time,” and that will bring even more developers to Apple’s platform. (In fact, AutoCAD for the Mac has been out for a couple of weeks now.)

Customer survey after customer survey show the Mac is scoring No. 1. We now have 318 stores in 11 countries, Cook says, and offers a quick overview of Apple’s new retail stores in Paris and Shanghai.

The stores in China are our highest trafficked stores anywhere, he says, and if you’ve ever been in one of our stores in the States, you know that’s saying a lot.

10:12 am: Jobs returns to the stage. So that’s the state of the Mac. Now let’s talk about some new products.

First on the agenda: iLife 11.

A number of enhancements in this latest iteration of Apple’s software suite: New full-screen modes in iPhoto, as well as photo book enhancements, slideshows, etc.

Jobs calls Phil Schiller to the stage for a quick demo.

Schiller demonstrates high-speed scrubbing through photo libraries and the new full-screen Faces and Places interfaces.

As before, location information included in photos is used to enhance the places experience with some slick map integration.

On to slideshows. Very slick and easy, as always. Another improvement: Album view, which can organize photos according to source automatically. The app immediately designates photos as originating from Facebook or Flickr.

Moving on, Schiller demos a new photo emailing feature. Very slick. Rather than launching the mail app to send photos, photos can be sent from within iPhoto itself.

You can send photos to your friends without ever leaving iPhoto, says Schiller, adding that the app also keeps track of how you’re sharing your photos, monitoring posts to Twitter and Facebook and even comments posted on those services.

Moving on now to the photo books feature, which also boasts some enhancements: Project view, which arranges books on the same wooden bookshelf you see in iBooks, and a new autopopulate feature that automatically creates books according to photo ratings and how the user has organized photos in albums.

10:24 am: Jobs returns to the stage. I think that’s awesome, he says. This is why we do what we do.

Next on today’s agenda: iMovie, which Jobs says has been given all new audio editing features along with a number of other enhancements.

The software now displays color-coded audio waveforms for easy editing. These waveforms can be adjusted manually and live with a simple move of the mouse.

Also added to the software: Audio effects. Pitch-shift the voices of your loved ones in home movies!

Moving on now to another new feature that Apple execs seem particularly excited about: Movie trailers. Easily create realistic movie trailers for your iMovie films, storyboarding them and scoring them as though they were major motion pictures. The trailer scores are actually new compositions recorded specifically for iMovie by the London Symphony Orchestra.

More about iMovies trailer feature: Templates in the software walk you through trailer creation, asking you to select specific shots–”action shot of Fred,” for example. The user selects them, slaps them into the template and the software does the rest. YouTube is going to be buried in these things in a month.

The first trailer is met with applause. Now we’re shown two more, also met with applause. The third, which features a “Raiders of the Lost Ark”-style typeface, is particularly cool.

10:40 am: Jobs takes the stage again. Isn’t that awesome? People are going to have so much fun with this.

Also new in iLife: A new version of GarageBand, enhanced with some new recording tools and lesson features as well.

Among the new studio tools, Groove Matching, which analyzes the rhythm of one instrument and instantly applies it to all other instruments in the song. Note that this is a “human” rhythm, Jobs says. We don’t want our songs to sound robotic. This is like a spell check for rhythm.

Another cool new feature: Flex Time, which allows notes to be expanded and contracted as needed. Play a note too short and you can use Flex Time to extend it.

Some new lessons have been added to GarageBand’s learn-to-play feature. Also a “how did I play?” function that rates the student’s performance as he or she is playing–in some cases along with the backing of a full orchestra.

A timeline tells students “where you rocked it and where you didn’t.” GarageBand also keeps a history of students’ performances so they can track their progress.

10:51 am: Jobs back on stage. We have over five million people using GarageBand, he says.

Now on pricing: $49 to upgrade, free with new Mac purchases. iLife 11 is available today.

Moving on now to FaceTime: A quick overview of the tech’s history. About 19 million FaceTime devices shipped so far.

No. 1 one request: Can we please do FaceTime on the Mac, says Jobs. So today we’re doing exactly that. You can now do FaceTime to the iPhone and iPod touch straight from the Mac.

Jobs calls Schiller from a Mac on stage. “What are you talking to us on, Phil?”

“An iPhone 4,” quips Schiller. “I always have it with me.”

Beta release of FaceTime today.

10:56 am: Next up, says Jobs, the entree for today: Mac OS X. We’ve had seven major releases of OS X in the last decade. I don’t think anyone can compete with that.

Today we’re going to show you the eighth major release: Lion.

Jobs notes that the company has been inspired by a lot of the innovations in iOS and wanted to bring some of them into OS X. That’s why we’re calling today’s event “Back to the Mac.”

So what do we like most about iOS: multitouch gestures, the App Store, app home screens, full-screen apps, apps that autosave and resume when launched.

More granularity on these topics now. Touch surfaces want to be horizontal, Jobs says, noting that people have expected Apple to use it vertically on upright screens. Not going to happen.

More than seven billion downloads from App Store to date, Jobs says by way of announcing an App Store for the Mac–largely the same as the iTunes App Store: Autoupdating, launchpad.

Jobs circles back to some core features of OS X–Expose, etc. Apple has integrated these all into a single feature called Mission Control.

Now a more in-depth demo of the Mac App Store: Launches from dock; shows top paid and free apps and updates just like iPhone apps. Purchase, download and installation identical as well.

Launchpad pops a full-screen grid of selected apps that can be scrolled through horizontally just as on iOS devices. You can also create folders for categories of apps, just as you can on the iPhone and iPad.

Upgrades to gesture support allow users to view apps full-screen and flick through them using swipe gestures.

Mission Control: Expose view of all open windows, dock, desktop, dashboard–very, very slick. Apps are organized into clusters.

11:11 am: Jobs returns to the stage. We’re very excited about Lion: It’s a whole new way of interacting with apps, purchasing them and organizing them. Jobs says Lion is on track for summer release.

But! We’re so excited about the Mac App Store that were not going to wait for Lion to open it. We’re going to open it in 90 days for Snow Leopard.

Now a wrap up of what we’ve seen so far: Mac data, store data, new iLife, FaceTime for Mac, and Lion, coming this summer, and the Mac App Store which is coming in 90 days.

But there is one more thing…

Jobs talks for a bit about Apple’s virtuous circle and bringing iOS innovations to OS X.

What would happen if we did the same thing with hardware? What would happen if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up?

The new MacBook Air. It’s like nothing we ever created before–2.9 pounds; only .11 inch at its thinnest. Complete aluminum body construction. Full-size keyboard and glass trackpad.

13.3 LED backlit display
1440×900 pixels
Core 2 Duo processor
Nvidia graphics
FaceTime cam
No hard drive. Complete solid-state storage.
Instant-on, up to 2x faster
More reliable
Silent operation

Battery life: 7 hours on wireless Web, 30 hours standby

We don’t think the PC industry’s battery tests reflect real-world results, so we’re using new ones and even under these new, more stringent tests we get seven hours of battery life using wireless Web.

So what’s inside: Mostly battery, a little bit of storage and a very tiny board.

Will be available in two models: 13.3-inch and 11-inch. The 11 has everything the 13.3 has, but less battery life–five hours wireless Web, 30 hours standby.

We see these as next generation of MacBooks. So were giving them a good price–$999 to $1,599.

The new Airs meet Apple’s green standards.

Both available starting today.

Time to roll a few videos: First the new MacBook Air ad–typical Apple marketing. Second, the now obligatory video of Apple execs talking up the latest innovations to be incorporated into the new kit announced today.

Geez–the larger MacBook Air tapers from .68 inch at its fattest end to .11 inch at its thinnest.

Big focus on flash storage and the leap it took to base a device like the Air on it while still keeping it a Mac.

Bullet point hit over and over again: This is the future of the MacBook.

11:30 am: Jobs returns to the stage to wrap things up. A quick thank-you to the engineers and attendees, and that’s it.

BoomTown will begin livebombing, oops, liveblogging the Yahoo third-quarter conference call with Yahoo execs and Wall Street analysts in five minutes.

Until then, please peruse the slides the Silicon Valley Internet giant has provided.

Here is a primer to the just-released results:

Net income: Slightly above investor expectations with operating margins improving nicely to 12 percent from six percent a year ago. CEO Carol Bartz sure can cut costs.

Revenue: Uh oh. Down from downer expectations to $1.12 billion, which is minus traffic acquisition costs. Bartz sure needs to juice the advertising sales team.

Page-view growth: Also down four percent. Time to prod the editorial and products team.

Employees: Up seven percent to 14,100.

Owned and Operated Search Revenue: Down seven percent.

O&O Display Revenue: Up 17 percent.

Big plus: Yahoo’s Japan and China assets ad up to $10 billion in value!

Well, you can crunch away on numbers as well as I can:

Q310EarningsPresentationFinal

Microsoft is holding yet another feature update event for its Bing search service later today at its Silicon Valley HQ.

Microsoft (MSFT) Online Services Division President Qi Lu will be there, as well as SVP Yusuf Mehdi, for–according to the invite–”a conversation about new directions and future opportunities of search and a demonstration of some new search innovation by Bing.”

Those two are the big guns at Bing, so this won’t be a minor update.

As has been widely reported, a lot will be about its continuing integration with Facebook data, which BoomTown scooped out last year.

Big giant and sustained yawn, since it is a year gone and everyone is doing this in some fashion, including Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO).

Unless, of course, it is executed in some distinct and unusual manner.

Maybe a search of Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s data, every time yours is displayed without explicit permission?

We can dream!

I am hoping, as before, there is some kind of mapping update, since Bing often shows some cool new stuff at these regular events.

And I’ll be asking about how the Yahoo search and online advertising partnership is going, natch.

Liveblogging and possible video attack to begin at 11:30 am PT. (Note to Microsoft minions: Donuts, not cream puffs.)

BoomTown motored on down the lovely Highway 280 in Silicon Valley to Facebook to hear execs talk about a new geo-location feature the powerful social networking site is rolling out today.

And, the new name of the service, which will be deeply integrated into its current update system, as I reported earlier, will be “Places.”

The service seems to be basic and useful–it is reviewed here by Walt Mossberg–allowing people to post their location on the Wall of their Facebook profile, much as you might a photo or video.

There will be no games, no mayors and no special discounts either in Facebook Places–just plain and simple checking in and, presumably, taking names.

Privacy is a big focus of the launch of Places, which will allow users to decline to be placed by others.

The $100 million question is how much Facebook will allow the integration of other competing services including Foursquare.

A lot, it seems, as sources said Foursquare Founder and CEO Dennis Crowley was invited to appear for the announcements, perhaps to minimize the idea that this is a Foursquare-killer.

It’s not. Today.

4:30 pm PT: Of course, I and a badillion other reporters arrived on time, to 1050 Page Mill Road in Palo Alto, Calif. in a mass of media force that would probably better be deployed on more weighty topics than the particulars of checking in from some hip dive bar in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco.

After some waiting, we were finally bussed–or perhaps the better word is geo-located–to the actual HQ of Facebook nearby, and shepherded (just like sheep that we are!) into its cafeteria.

Except it had been duded up like a tiki lounge with palm trees and a driftwood stage. I felt as though I was suddenly on an episode of “Gilligan’s Island.” Cue Ginger for her big song number with the coconut bra!

Hey, Skipper…

5:18 pm: That skipper would be CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who was–as usual–dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and was endearingly awkward as always. It’s kind of touching that Zuckerberg still tries to have the just-us-guys posture, despite all the fame and fortune.

He quickly announced Facebook Places, across the U.S. tomorrow, on an Apple (AAPL) iPhone app and a mobile Web site.

He talked about deciding to finally launch Places after a dinner out with his girlfriend, when, deploying a test version, they realized another Facebook exec, Chris Cox and his fiance were nearby at another restaurant.

It was an earth-shaking moment, implied Zuckerberg.

Ahem, knock, knock…that’s Foursquare! Have you heard of it?

Yes, Facebook has been ogling the hot New York location start-up for a year, which is precisely why we are all here.

5:28 pm: Michael Sharon, the product manager of Places gave us a little run-through of the service, which was about what you would expect.

Foursquare except cleaner. Booyah except no games. Gowalla except, well, not Gowalla.

What’s important is that it is very integrated into Facebook’s current features, such as the Wall and status updates. Which is the right thing to do since Facebook has no business being all trendy.

The plains are covered with the bodies of pioneers, as they say, so what Facebook Places is, essentially, is a fast follow.

Sharon moved onto privacy, the big gorilla in the room. You have to opt-in and agree and click here and default to off and you can only tag your friends and you can also block them too.

Also, per Woody Allen’s “Bananas,” all Facebook citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside, so we can check.

Next, lots of info about APIs, so partners can also be part of Facebook’s geo-locating universe.

Up trotted Gowalla’s CTO and Co-founder Scott Raymond, who showed off Gowalla and Facebook integration.

Then a Foursquare exec–not Crowley, who has apparently checked in at a Chipolte in New York at the time of the places launch–loped up to say how great it all is. Just great! Really! Frankly, what else would the Foursquares say at this point.

Next: Yelp dude. Great! Just great! Integration! Check-in and pull your Facebook friends into the Yelp app.

Of course, it would not be a set without Booyah’s Keith Lee. Loves it! Fun! Just great!

This felt like a slow-moving version of invasion of the geo-location snatchers, a parade of glassy-eyed hostages, some scurvy mates walking the platform plank. Aaaaarrrr.

5:50 pm: Finally, Facebook’s product head Chris Cox, who is perhaps one of the more fetching geeks out there, bounded onstage to be all fetching and smart.

He talked about places like home, work and, um, bars. Well, actually, community locations, quoting Ray Oldenburg.

I was honestly not really listening to him at all, because I was riveted on his new haircut, which is just like the buzzed one Vince got on “Entourage” this season.

Errant thought: Those guys on “Entourage” would never check in from a bar! They are totally busy getting their groove on with the ladies–even Johnny Drama–and chillaxing with the doobies and tequila!

When I checked in again mentally, Cox was still chattering away about some glowing phone that tells you everything that happened in that bar forever and ever, since everyone was checking in and memorializing the place over time.

Good god, isn’t it enough that Facebook has all those drunkey-drunk photos from college students nationwide.

No! It wants it all! Yay, all our our drunkey-drunk moments will now be preserved in check-ins for all eternity!

Honey, remember when I ended up in the gutter here? Fun times for our grandkids to unearth one day!

5:58 pm: The Skipper Zuckerberg was back to moderate the Q&A.

Privacy questions about making private places public. If a lot of people are there, it becomes public.

Next: What up with monetization with deals? Zuckerberg notes that Places is at its starting point and “certainly you can imagine these things in the future.”

There was a question about how Places started. Well, IMHO, the moment when Facebook saw Foursquare’s innovation and freaked out.

A very goofy question about what happens when drunkey-drunk places shut down and all those memories are gone, which made me wonder if the reporter asking was drunkey-drunk.

“That’s not a problem we can solve,” said Cox.

Good answer.

Now, the Skipper wants to show us a Facebook custom, which made me suddenly nervous. Sacrifice of the media? No, just some switch-pulling thing.

There was apparently also another tradition–for a six-year-old company, that is–of hitting some gong.

Aha, it’s “The Gong Show.”

Geo-locate that.

Later today, as BoomTown previously reported, Facebook is likely to show off what it has been working on for a while now in the geo-location arena.

We’ll see whassup at 4:30 pm PT, when Facebook will hold a “news event” at the social-networking powerhouse’s HQ in Silicon Valley. (I will be liveblogging from it, natch.)

While most agree that the unveiling of the powerful social-networking site’s geo-location plans will have big impact, it will be much more interesting to see precisely what Facebook will do and how it innovates.

The company has certainly been talking about some sort of location feature for a long time–even as start-ups such as Foursquare and Booyah have grown like gangbusters–so much so that it has become a mini-waiting game in Silicon Valley.

But how Facebook integrates the hot trend into what it has built rather than bought–Facebook considered buying the New York-based Foursquare–is full of all kinds of complexities and possible sand traps.

Here is what I think it might–and should–show off:

NO PLAYING GAMES

There is plenty of that kind of silliness offered by others, and the badge, mayorships and general gaming is not really Facebook’s style.

In fact, gimmickry, which eventually becomes tiresome, is not really one of the tools in Facebook’s arsenal. Creating features–such as the Wall–that have become daily helpers is the ticket here.

In fact, it would be great if Facebook could go radically useful with a check-in feature, which would be for the rest of us who are not interested in broadcasting our presence at New York clubs into the wee hours.

Still, it would be nice to get all kinds of offers and freebies for using the service and giving up even more personal information to the hungry maw of this–still–Mark Zuckerberg production.

SEAMLESS THIRD-PARTY AGGREGATION

A must, given Facebook is all about integration and coordination for its users. It has already easily welcomed in all kinds of third-party services, and it must give developers on its platform geo-location capabilities.

So, any Facebook offering would need to integrate all the current location services, both on the Web site and in its mobile app.

That said, it is also important that Facebook also has a strong and effective offering of its own.

PLEASE MARK, I WANT SOME MORE

Location-sharing needs to be more than location-sharing, IMHO.

That’s because check-ins can become as inane as some Twitter posts.

In my bedroom! Now, in my bathroom! Now, in my kitchen. Hey from the 7-11! Aaaaaagh!

In fact, what is most useful about Foursquare is a part the service seems to give little attention to–user-generated info about various places.

Facebook could give truly helpful on-the-go info if it did a good job here, letting me know–for example–that I need to avoid the shrimp-puff appetizer at all costs or alerting me to the joys of some esoteric spa service.

Best of all, it would be nice if this info were not generated just by my friends, but by everyone. Because my friends are really boring.

WHAT HAPPENS ON FACEBOOK CHECK-IN, STAYS ON FACEBOOK CHECK-IN

Facebook has a long-running and much-deserved reputation for not treating privacy issues with enough concern and care.

While it is one thing to have a status update that you are enjoying 43 cold ones by the Jersey Shore with Snooki, it is quite another to geo-locate your trashy sojourn without a terrific level of control.

And, of course, controls that are comprehensible and easy to use.

Thus, some rules:

Any location service must be opt-in only.

Any location service must be set to private to start and allow users to change settings with each update.

Check-ins must be verified, so people cannot lie and manipulate the system.

The entire Facebook community of 500 million users must know exactly where Mark Zuckerberg is at every moment–wait, that’s just my secret wish.

Well, not a wish: All Facebook execs should publicly and actively be using the check-in services to let us all know that everyone is on the exact same page.

BoomTown took the corporate All Things Digital jet–aka Virgin America, seat 10A–up to Redmond, Wash., today to attend Microsoft’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting, which also includes a passel of media drones like me.

I will be liveblogging the event all day, which is essentially a cavalcade of top execs from the software giant taking the stage and showing off their wares.

There should be a little bit of swanning, since Microsoft (MSFT) turned in very good financial results last week, posting a huge increase in earnings and revenue due to the uptick in PC sales and the intro of the Windows 7 operating system. Losses at its Online Services division remained high, so thank goodness for servers and tools!

Here we go:

8:15 am PT: I was late due to the completely confusing streets of suburban Redmond, all of which look exactly alike, as does every building on Microsoft’s sprawling campus. I am a streets of San Francisco girl, obvi.

In the Conference Center, though, things had not started well past the 8 am start time, as we await the entry of investor dude Bill Koefoed.

U2′s “Beautiful Day” was playing over the sound system, which it was not up here in the Pacific Northwest this morning–it was kind of cold and gloomy, a la “Twilight”–but hopefully will be for sparkly Microsoft execs. We’ll see!

Finally, Koefoed came out and started in on feedback, touting the newly renovated investor relations site, which he is “pretty proud of.” It is nice looking, as are most of Microsoft’s hand-out materials.

In fact, he sent me an excited note last week, because I posted Microsoft’s pretty fourth-quarter slides.

Dear Bill: You need much better things to get excited about! Like the new Magic Trackpad from Apple (AAPL)! Wait, I mean Windows Phone 7!

Koefoed moved quickly to point out last week’s strong results, which is no surprise. When you’ve got lemonade, make more lemonade!

Then he outlined the various Microsoft’s eight “core” businesses, such as Xbox, Bing, Microsoft Office, Windows Azure and, of course, Windows, that the company will be going over.

That’s a lot of core, isn’t it?

Some questions to be answered: Business PC refresh and share momentum? Impact of iPad/slates? Windows 7 phone? Expense control?

Beautiful or not, it was going to be a looooong day.

8:42 am: A jaunty Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s COO, bounded out. He tried to get the crowd more lively, but this was not to be unless there was a lot more coffee.

I had great hopes for a goofy quote this morning from Turner, who declared at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference earlier this month about Apple’s antenna controversy: “It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that.”

I don’t know about you, but insulting a competitor by shooting off your own foot is a gift that keeps on giving to me.

In any case, Turner said Microsoft was now “leading with the cloud,” a move that the company had been resisting in the past. Now: All in!

He outlined all the various services for business customers. “We are the market leader in cloud services for business,” said Turner, noting Microsoft had been too quiet about the inevitable move of data and software services to big services in the digital sky.

(Actually, in its secret heart, Microsoft was hoping this whole Internet thing would go away and it would be back to a PC on every desktop, but that horse has left the barn, so it’s cloud time!)

Next up for Turner: The much deserved popularity of Windows 7. Of course, since Vista was Microsoft’s Antennagate–except much, much, much worse–it was not hard to be better.

Turner then moved on to bashing Google (GOOG) and other competitors. Turner put up some quotes from Jaguar employees, after the car company switched to Google for email and other services.

One said Google was like vinyl seats. Ziiiiing!

Next Turner victim: VMware (VMW)! He claimed its products were pricier and not cloudy enough.

As for Linux: Meh!

Oracle (ORCL): Customers don’t want to be locked into the land of Larry Ellison!

Cisco (CSCO): Just you wait, John Chambers!

9:19 am: Turner headed off and Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie started in on his speech, titled “Reimagining Microsoft’s Future.”

That would be the client plus the cloud, natural user interface and something he called “working on your behalf.”

Mundie launched into his future-dude schtick, but he’s not exactly Alvin Toffler, so I started desperately mainlining the caffeine.

He talked about movable data centers, the “Internet of Things” and other cloud innovations, but there is no new idea here to blow your mind.

Is it too much to wish Mundie would talk about an invisibility cloak? Instead, it was the orchestration of data authority.

That will apparently be a new data marketplace product, codenamed Dallas, to shop for giant data sets and more.

Mundie than showed off some personalization-driven features in the Bing search service, which are also not new concepts.

For example, he showed a menu, embedded in a table, that might know what you like to eat at a particular restaurant you frequent.

This is what would be on my table and there is no need of a fancy computer table to know this: Donuts, donuts, donuts.

Speaking of which, FAM minions: Where the heck were my donuts?

Mundie then moved onto Kinect, once called Project Natal, the actually cool gesture interface for gaming that will be available for Xbox soon.

Finally, he finished up with a video clip of a medical triage assistant. Great, even less customer service from hospitals. The demo was flatly freaky.

The morning session wrapped up with a visit to the technology showcase to “expect the unexpected,” although I was not expecting that in any way, and then it was off to lunch.

Next up in the afternoon session: CEO Steve Ballmer at 1 pm PT.

As it turned out, Microsoft (MSFT) blew past even the sunniest Wall Street expectations in its fourth-quarter earnings.

Spurred by a robust PC upgrade cycle, net income rose to $4.5 billion, or 51 cents a share, from $3 billion, and revenue to $16.04 billion from $13.1 billion. Analysts had been expecting earnings of 46 cents a share on $15.2 billion in revenue.

(Even losses from the Online Services Division were lower than the previous quarter, dropping from $731 million to $696 million–although this quarter’s losses were more than the same quarter a year ago, which were $585 million.)

BoomTown was on a plane jetting to Aspen for the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference, so I missed liveblogging the management call this afternoon (sorry, Frank!). Here are the software giant’s slides of the financial results to peruse at your leisure:

Microsoft Q4-FY10 Slides

As BoomTown reported last week, Yahoo planned to announce a partnership deal with Nokia this morning, centering on email and mapping.

At the announcement, the companies said Nokia will be the exclusive global provider of Yahoo’s maps and navigation services, integrating Ovi Maps across Yahoo properties and branded as “powered by Ovi.” And Yahoo will become the exclusive global provider of Nokia’s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services branded as “Ovi Mail/Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo.”

This morning at 7 am PT, I liveblogged the event, which took place in New York, with Yahoo (YHOO) Carol Bartz and Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of the Finland-based handset maker.

As you will see, it was over in a flash.

Last week, Yahoo sent out an invite for the press conference, which read:

“Please join Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz for an exciting announcement about providing global consumers with rich online and mobile experiences, and bringing forward a new era in keeping consumers connected.”

Nokia (NOK) is the largest manufacturer of mobile devices in the world, although it has lost ground in the key new arena to innovative smartphones, which are being pushed by Google (GOOG) via its Android operating system and in recent years, by Apple (AAPL) with its iPhone.

Here we go:

7:02 am PT: Nokia reminded everyone to “keep our cellphones on.” Get it? Ha. Ha. Ha.

It was Bartz of Yahoo and Nokia’s Kallasvuo on the line. It sounded–I was on the horn from California–a bit tinny, actually.

Just as I wrote, they unveiled a partnership related to Yahoo email going on Nokia devices, but also including Nokia maps on Yahoo.

Yahoo’s map offerings have been weak for a long time now, as Google and Microsoft (MSFT) mapping efforts have grown strong.

Both Bartz and Kallasvuo said very little about anything, except how great it all is.

I would include quotes, but they were really dull!

7:11 am PT: It then opened for questions, but it seemed BoomTown was somehow cut off!

Oh well, foiled again–which is to say, not at all, since we already scooped this deal last week.

Thus, some background:

The partnership–code-named “Project Nike” after the Greek goddess of victory and not the athletic footwear giant–has been under consideration for many years between the companies without result.

Yahoo has had a range of various mobile initiatives and has had many, mostly failed, partnerships with carriers and telecom makers.

But without its own phone or mobile operating system, the Internet giant is essentially nowhere in what has become the most important digital sector today.

Nokia, which makes more mobile devices than any other company, has also struggled to keep up the lightning-fast pace of innovation and has been looking for ways to compete as the landscape shifts dramatically.

Thus, the Nokia deal is likely to be a splashy centerpiece of Wednesday’s investor day by Yahoo in Silicon Valley, which will feature Bartz and her senior management.

Here is the entire press release:

Nokia and Yahoo! to Bring Integrated Web Services to Millions of Consumers around the World

Global Strategic Alliance Enables Industry Leaders to Leverage Strengths in E-mail, Instant Messaging, Maps and Navigation across PC and Mobile Devices

NEW YORK, May 24, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Nokia (NYSE:NOK), announced a worldwide strategic alliance to extend the reach of their industry leading online services and offer people rich experiences that keep them connected to their world and the world around them.

Building on more than five years of collaboration, Nokia and Yahoo! will leverage each others’ strengths in e-mail, instant messaging and maps and navigation services, to provide consumers with access to world-class experiences on both PC and mobile devices.

As part of the alliance:

* Nokia will be the exclusive, global provider of Yahoo!’s maps and navigation services, integrating Ovi Maps across Yahoo! properties, branded as “powered by Ovi.”

* Yahoo! will become the exclusive, global provider of Nokia’s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services branded as “Ovi Mail / Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo!”

* Nokia and Yahoo! plan to work on ID federation between their services, beginning by making it easy for people to use their Ovi user IDs across select Yahoo! properties to easily access the online content and services they need.

“Delivering great user experiences–both online and on your mobile–is what this alliance is all about,” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO, Nokia. “We’re enabling millions of Yahoo! customers in key markets including North America to discover the unique capabilities that Ovi Maps brings. Similarly, Yahoo!’s online expertise will bring exciting mail and messaging enhancements to millions of Ovi Mail customers across almost every country around the world, many of whom will have their first Internet experience on their mobile.”

“What a combination,” said Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo!. “We’re excited to expand the reach of our best-in-class Mail and Messenger services, bringing personalized experiences to more people across the mobile Web, particularly in emerging markets where we are seeding the next generation of Yahoo! users. At the same time, we believe Nokia’s strength and continued investment in maps and navigation will greatly enhance our existing products, enabling us to focus on areas that are core to our business.”

Together, Yahoo! and Nokia will continue to deliver compelling Internet experiences that address the core needs of consumers, developers, operators and advertisers. The companies will utilize their respective global distribution advantages and brand recognition across consumer audiences.

Select, co-branded service offerings are expected to become available from the second half of 2010, with global availability expected in 2011.