Liveblogging Yahoo Q4 Earnings: "Encouraging" Is the New Black

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. Yahoo exec, though, declared the results “encouraging.”

News Byte

Promoted Tweets Graduate to Google

Quite the week for the paid ads that Twitter calls Promoted Tweets. First they start showing up uninvited in some users’ timelines in a test ahead of a broader rollout. And over the next couple of days, they’ll start to appear along with certain query results in Google’s Realtime Search. This is the first time that ads from an outside network will appear on Google, reports Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, and the revenue will be split 50-50.

Google's Victory Dance: Check Out Our Go-Go Numbers!

After showing off financial numbers that blew away Wall Street’s earnings estimates, what could Google do for an encore? Trot out even more numbers, via a tantalizing but not-that-revealing striptease.

Liveblogging the Bing-Facebook Bromance: "Underdog" Search With a Little Help From Your Friends

BoomTown motored on down to the Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley on a fabulously sunny day to liveblog the latest Bing event. The software giant is updating its search service, announcing deep integration–part of a deal announced last year–with Facebook. The theme, according to Microsoft SVP Yusuf Mehdi, quoting the Beatles, search with "a little help from your friends."

Googzilla! Yahoo Japan Confirms Google Switch From Yahoo for Both Paid and Algo Search

As BoomTown reported earlier today, Yahoo Japan confirmed it would switch its search technology and paid search provider to Google from Yahoo. The move is a definite blow to Yahoo’s new search and advertising alliance with Microsoft, although Yahoo sought to minimize the damage in a statement. But make no mistake, given the huge Japanese market: It’s Googzilla totally wiping the floor with MicroHooSoftra.

Exclusive: Is Yahoo Japan Poised to Switch to Google Search?

In what would be a stunning blow to the massive search alliance between Microsoft and Yahoo, Google is apparently zeroing in on a deal to grab the algorithmic search business for Yahoo Japan, said several sources. The agreement between Yahoo Japan–which is an independent company–and the U.S. search giant could be announced as early as today in Japan, sources said, and could be part of a larger deal between the two companies around mobile or other products. If they join together, the pair will control almost the entire market share of search in the Japanese market. Paid search is apparently not part of this deal at this time.

Here's What Analysts Should Be Asking About at Yahoo's Investor Day: The Microsoft Search Deal (And No Silver Bullets)

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 a need to cover over the problems and play up the pretty, shiny new parts. But it’s probably more helpful for those in analog attendance to focus on some key issues that are present and accounted for right now and grill Yahoo relentlessly about them.

China Drops Google’s Call

You can’t hear me now: The search giant reports that its mobile service is being disrupted in the People’s Republic.

Google Going to Abide by Chinese Law Whether Google Likes It or Not

Well, that didn’t take long at all. China parried Google’s challenge to its control of the Internet this morning, limiting access to the search giant’s unfiltered Hong Kong site. Multiple reports out of China today claim Beijing is restricting access to Google.com.hk and blocking searches on sensitive queries.
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Aardvark Confirms It Has Been Acquired, but Not by What Company (But It's Google)

Aardvark, the social search engine that has been the subject of much attention since it was founded in late 2007, confirmed that is has been acquired. “We can confirm that we signed a deal to be acquired,” wrote CEO Max Ventilla in an email to BoomTown this morning. But Ventilla would not reveal the buyer, which a report earlier this morning said is Google, for $50 million. Google has since confirmed that it is the buyer.
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No More Bing Brother, Says Microsoft

LIVE: Google Searchology

Google: I Know What You're Thinking

Google: I Know What You’re Thinking